The William & Mary men's golf team hits the road for Beaufort, S.C., this weekend to take aim at the program's second Colonial Athletic Association Championship.  The conference tournament begins Sunday, April 25, and runs through Tuesday at the Dataw Island Club.  Live results for all three rounds are available through CAASports.com and TribeAthletics.com.  Due to inclement weather on Saturday, Sunday's first round will begin at 11 a.m., with the Tribe getting on the course beginning at 11:50 a.m.

Live Results

The Championships
The CAA Championships will be decided over 54 holes at the Dataw Island Club this year, on the club's Cotton Dike Course.  The course is par-72 and 6,787 yards, and will be the Tribe's third outing on coastal bermuda grass.  W&M consistently improved through each of the first six rounds on that turf, and will be looking to continue that trend as it looks for its second conference title to go with the 1985 CAA win.  The CAA Championships will have three rounds of action, one each day beginning at 8:30 a.m.  The winning team as well as the winning individual (if not on the championship squad) will earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Regionals.

Scouting the Tribe
William & Mary has an overall record of 26-20 in four events this spring, with its best showings coming in each of its last two outings.  At the Golden Horseshoe Intercollegiate at the end of March, the Tribe finished third overall out of 16 teams, and the following week, shot a season-best 871 (+7) at the Golfweek Spring Invitational.  As a team, the Tribe is averaging 294.08, the best scoring average in school history.

Each of W&M's five players averaging under 74.0 strokes this season will take to the course this week looking for the conference title.  Junior Matthew Feinstein (McLean, Va.) leads the way in both stroke average (73.42), ninth-best ever at W&M, and head-to-head percentage (201-83, .708).  He tied for 10th at the home event, and shot a season-low 219 (+3) at the Bash at the Beach in mid-March.  Feinstein has four rounds of par or better this season, tied for the most on the team.  At the 2019 CAA Championships, he shot +14 and finished 24th overall, third on the team as W&M finished seventh.

Freshman Will Rieck (Brentwood, Tenn.) will make his first appearance as part of the scoring line-up, after playing as an individual each of the last two tournaments.  He shot +15 at the Golden Horseshoe, and then recorded a massive improvement to finish the Golfweek event even-par and tied for 20th overall.  At that second event, Rieck had rounds of 1-under and 3-under (69), and is averaging 73.50.  If W&M can advance to the NCAA field and Rieck can keep or improve that average, it'd be the second-lowest ever for a Tribe freshman.  Grad student Preston Ball (Raleigh, N.C.) has played every event for W&M this spring, and is averaging 73.67 strokes per round.  He's shot better than 5-over at each of the last three events, including +1 at the Golfweek Invite, and finished ninth overall at the home meet.  Ball played in one Patriot League Championship in his four years at Loyola (Md.), finishing 39th at the 2019 event.

Sophomore Jimmy Taylor (Alexandria, Va.) is averaging 73.83 strokes per round, and shot the team's best round of the season with a 68 (-4) at the second round of the Golfweek Invitational.  That was also his best tournament score of the year, 1-under, while his best finish came at the season-opening Ross Collegiate Classic where he took ninth overall.  Fellow sophomore Trevor Binau (Columbus, Ohio) is close behind with a 73.92 average, and has improved his scoring at each and every tournament this spring.  Binau had a best finish of 10th at the Golden Horseshoe, and the following week at Golfweek, shot 3-over for his lowest score of the season.  Binau has also shown the ability to go low consistently, with two rounds of 69 (-3) and a team-high four rounds of par or better this spring.

Scouting the Field
In addition to W&M, seven other teams will be aiming for the conference title after two-time reigning champions UNCW had to bow out due to CoVID-19 protocols in their program.  The College of Charleston, winners of four-straight between 2014-17, are the top seed overall, with James Madison ranked second and Elon third.  Drexel is seeded fourth overall, with the Tribe fifth and Delaware sixth.  Towson is ranked seventh coming into the tournament, and Hofstra rounds out the list in eighth.  Individually, JMU's George Heath is the top returning finisher from the 2019 championships, where he took second overall.

W&M at the CAA Championships
The Tribe won the CAA title in 1985 by 17 strokes, after finishing second by a single stroke at the inaugural event in 1984.  Since then, W&M also finished second in 1991, 2010, and 2015.  Individually, Hall-of-Famer John McHenry '86 was the low scorer in both 1984 and 1985, and finished second in 1986.  In 1985, he tied teammate Mike Gregor '85 for the title.  Since that point, the Tribe has had individuals finish second in both 2008 (Brent Paladino '09) and 2013 (Alex Hicks '15).  W&M advanced to NCAA Regional competition in 1991, 1994, and most recently in 2002, when current head coach Tim Pemberton '05 was a sophomore and finished top-five at the CAA Championships along with his classmate Gary Barton '05.