South Carolina is making a change.
Gamecocks’ athletic director Ray Tanner introduced Thursday afternoon that the varsity was parting methods with head males’s golf coach Invoice McDonald after 18 seasons.
McDonald’s groups had certified for 15 NCAA regionals and 7 NCAA Championships, with a finest nationwide end of T-5 on the 2016 NCAA Championship in Eugene, Oregon. McDonald racked up 29 workforce victories and had 34 people win tournaments. This season South Carolina completed eighth at regionals to cap a season by which the Gamecocks competed for a number of occasions after its finest participant, Nathan Franks, fractured his elbow in a workforce van crash.
“I simply had an unbelievable run,” McDonald advised GolfChannel.com earlier within the day. “A whole lot of feeling good concerning the individuals you’re round, a household really feel.”
McDonald performed collegiately at Georgia Tech earlier than turning skilled. Simply three years into his professional profession, nevertheless, he broke a bone in his hand and shortly took a job promoting carpet chemical substances for his dad’s pal in his hometown of Dalton, Georgia. He did that for 9 months earlier than transitioning into teaching; he was employed as an assistant below Puggy Blackmon at Georgia Tech, the place McDonald studied biomechanics and the way that pertains to golf. He spent only one 12 months teaching earlier than taking an instruction job in Columbia, South Carolina, for a number of years, adopted by a number of instructing stints round Atlanta.
“I wished to be a biomechanist, however I used to be a whole fool,” stated McDonald, who jokes, “There’s an image of me up there [graduating] that claims, ‘If he did it, anyone can.’”
A few decade after Blackmon took the South Carolina job, McDonald accepted the affiliate head teaching place below Blackmon there in 2006, shifting his household, together with 2- and 4-year-old youngsters, to Columbia on a one-year, $75,000 contract. The Gamecocks received a regional title that season, and McDonald took over for Blackmon that subsequent season.
McDonald coach a number of future PGA Tour gamers at South Carolina, together with Mark Anderson, Wesley Bryan and Matt NeSmith, who was part of that 2015-16 squad, which additionally included the likes of Will Starke, Sean Kelly, Scott Stevens and Keenan Huskey.
“If I’m sitting on the again porch with a fireplace going interested by the nice ol’ days, it was that crowd,” McDonald stated.
McDonald’s profession additionally included a harrowing interval. McDonald was recognized with continual myelogenous leukemia in 2009 and took a chemo tablet for seven years; he’s been cancer-free ever since.
“The primary six months had been hell,” McDonald stated. “Now, they’ll’t discover something.”
McDonald doesn’t know if he’ll coach once more, however he would like to do one thing to assist increase consciousness and cash for childhood leukemia.
“It’s some of the heartbreaking issues on the planet,” McDonald stated.
McDonald’s assistant, Brady Gregor, has been named interim head coach whereas a nationwide seek for a everlasting alternative is already underway.
South Carolina is the third SEC golf teaching emptiness this 12 months. Georgia just lately employed USF’s Erika Brennan to be its new ladies’s coach. LSU has been interviewing for its new males’s coach ever since Chuck Winstead stepped down final fall, although phrase is the Tigers have selected their man and can announce after the NCAA Championship.
