The University of Notre Dame men’s golf team will be the number three seed at the Palm Beach Gardens NCAA Regional as it begins 2022 NCAA postseason competition May 15-18. The competition will be held at the PGA National Resort’s Champion Course.
The Irish, ranked 15th in the latest Golfstat.com rankings, earned their second consecutive regional berth and highest regional seed in program history this season while establishing themselves as a group capable of advancing out of regional competition to the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona from May 27 to June 1. The top five teams from each regional advance to the NCAA Championship.
“We were ready for wherever they were going to send us,” head coach John Handrigan said after the selection was announced.
“With the depth we have developed on this team, there was no disadvantage for us at any regional. We have spent a lot of time in Florida. We practice and play down there quite a bit. This team’s ceiling is high – we have built a championship program here at Notre Dame. I think this team can go a long way.”
Notre Dame is coming off a fifth-place finish at the ACC Championship where the team ended up just one stroke away from advancing to stroke play (the top four teams after the first three rounds of the championship advance to stroke play to determine the team champion). The Irish have finished out of the top five as a team at their competitions just once in 2021-22 – the first event of the year back in September when they took seventh place at the Marquette Invitational.
The team tied for first at the Gopher Invitational in the fall, won the team title wire-to-wire at the Stephens Cup to cap their fall schedule and continued their consistent play with three third place finishes, a runner up and a fourth place effort during the spring schedule.
Notre Dame’s lineup is led by junior Palmer Jackson, a Haskins and Ben Hogan Award candidate who also became the first Irish golfer to earn a spot on the 2022 Palmer Cup team. Jackson is coming off a 68-69-68 third-place finish at the ACC Championship and has finished out of the top 10 just once this season in 11 appearances.
“We are very excited,” Jackson said.
“We have been to Florida many times this year and a lot of us have played on that course. There are a lot of good teams in the regional and it will be a challenge. We are very familiar with the conditions we will face, we play on that type of grass a lot. We just need to focus on being the most prepared team when we walk onto the first tee.”
Graduate student Davis Chatfield is playing some of the best golf of his career entering the postseason. He finished second at the Stitch Intercollegiate in April and followed up with a 10th-place finish at the ACC Championship.
“There is a bit of trepidation waiting on where you are going to go, but it is awesome to know where we will be competing,” Chatfield said.
“It is going to be a great spot for us. I played that course my freshman year. It is a tough track, there will be a lot of separation and it will be a great test of golf. We need to focus hard on our prep over the next week and a half and figure out a game plan of how to attack the course.”
Palm Beach Gardens Regional Teams
- Vanderbilt
- Florida
- Notre Dame
- Florida State
- Purdue
- New Mexico
- South Florida
- Little Rock
- College of Charleston
- Indiana
- San Diego
- Davidson
- Loyola Maryland
- Charleston Southern