On the eve of the National Golf Invitational, 10 Tennessee Tech men’s golfers were recovering from a long travel day to the desert – their tanks refueled and spirits lifted by one of the West Coast’s most well-known perks: In-N-Out Burger.
Few coaches travel this many men to a postseason event, but head coach Polk Brown saw an opportunity with the NGI invitation and devised a way to make it worthwhile for his entire team.
Brown, in his 15th season at Tennessee Tech after playing four years for the Golden Eagles in the early 2000s, has only traveled a team to postseason one time before in his career. His team won the Ohio Valley Conference Championship in 2024, securing an Automatic Qualifying spot in NCAA Regionals that year. This time, when Brown received the call that his squad, which had fallen to Arkansas-Little Rock in the title match at the conference championship two weeks earlier, had earned a spot in the NGI, it felt like a gift from left field.
“I didn’t even realize we would get an invitation,” Brown said. The tournament, now in its fourth year, will be played May 22-24 at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona.
Tennessee Tech’s ranking (No. 193) doesn’t do justice to the strength and consistency the Golden Eagles demonstrated. They compiled a head-to-head record of 97-43-2 and finished in the top five three times as a team before nearly winning that OVC crown in match play.
Here is a team built for a postseason event. The NGI allows for the Golden Eagles to see how they stack up against other top programs from around the country while also getting a taste of the postseason pomp and circumstance to take back to campus for a jumpstart to next season.
That kind of experience will be particularly important as Tennessee Tech moves into the Southern Conference next year, joining schools with prominent golf programs such as Chattanooga, Furman and Mercer.
“My hope is that, certainly we want to go out there and play high-level golf the next few days and hopefully win the tournament, but just something that they’ll all come away thinking we want to do this every year – whether it’s this event or regionals,” Brown said. “We don’t want our seasons to ever end in the middle of April or late April.”
Brown was actually on his way to U.S. Open local qualifying in Medina, Ohio, the day he found out Tennessee Tech had qualified for the NGI. Note that Brown was not just driving there to watch a player compete — he had his own tee time, and the Golden Eagles’ head women’s coach Amanda Brown, an Ohio native, was on the hook to caddie for him.
Immediately, Brown thought of his two seniors, Nick Etherton and Haden Maxwell. But he thought of the rest of the team, too.
“As soon as we found out, I texted the whole team and told them when the dates were,” Brown said. “Fortunately, they hadn’t had like any family vacations planned or anything. . . . I didn’t want the guys who weren’t playing to have to sit and watch the team every day out there in 95-degree weather.”
Brown and Smith got to work setting up golf for the extra four players not in the NGI, using connections Smith still had from time spent living in the area and working at TPC Scottsdale. Brown loves the way the NGI allows them to cap their careers, but it’s “kind of a cool way for the other guys to play, too, and kick off their summer — give them a good chance to prepare.”
While five starters and a substitute play a practice round and compete at Southern Dunes, Smith will take the remaining four to play a round at Troon North in Scottsdale. On Saturday, Smith, who is also an assistant coach on the men’s staff, will coach the team at the NGI while Brown takes his reserves to Arizona Country Club.
On Sunday, the whole squad will be on site at Southern Dunes to give Etherton and Maxwell a proper sendoff.
Maxwell has been one of the top scorers in program history. He won twice early in the season and Brown acknowledges there could have been many more titles — he finished in the top 4 five more times.
Etherton, a transfer from Chattanooga, provided a big boost, too.
“Honestly, all 10 guys have just been great to coach,” Brown said. “Got a lot of good leadership on the team – Nick and Haden were probably our leaders from that perspective but I think they all generally get along very well – very close group, spend a lot of time together.”
Given that closeness, traveling 10 seems exactly the right way to end the season.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Tennessee Tech all in for National Golf Invitational debut