CARLSBAD, Calif. – It had been exactly 30 years since Alan Bratton rolled in the winning putt in a sudden-death playoff against a Tiger Woods-led Stanford team at the 1995 NCAA Championship in Columbus, Ohio, clinching his first team national championship in his final season at Oklahoma State.
As Bratton, now the Cowboys’ longtime head coach, sat in a lounge area Wednesday morning at Omni La Costa, just hours before his team was set to face Virginia in the championship match, he recalled how legendary Golfweek writer Ron Balicki had picked Oklahoma State to win three decades ago. It was a nod that worried the Cowboy faithful considering Balicki, genially known as “Wrong Ron” for his propensity to whiff on his NCAA pick, had yet to predict the correct champion. The night before the final round, the Cowboys, three shots off the lead, returned from dinner to find a sticky note on Tripp Kuehne’s hotel-room door. The message, scribbled in pen, read, BELIEVE IN DESTINY.
“We didn’t know who put it there, but Tripp ended up writing it on his golf ball,” Bratton said. “Sure enough, we win, Tripp tells the story, and Balicki writes it. Good story, right? As the years went on, I kept thinking, I bet Balicki put the note on the door.”
At one championship in the early 2000s, Bratton, then a Ping rep, finally got Balicki to admit to it.
“He wrote his own story,” Bratton added with a chuckle.
By Wednesday evening, Bratton’s team had penned theirs by capturing the program’s 12th NCAA Championship and first in seven years.
When Bratton shared the tale of Balicki’s note on Tuesday night after a thrilling semifinal victory over Ole Miss, sophomore Ethan Fang, one of two Cal transfers in the Cowboys’ starting five, decided to write the acronym B.I.D. on his ball for his anchor match opposite Bryan Lee. It couldn’t hurt, he figured, and with each putt he struck Wednesday, he caught a glimpse of inspiration. The final time Fang lined up his ball, on the 16th green with a 1-up advantage on Lee, he never got to hit it. No need to, as Eric Lee, the second arrival from Berkeley last summer, was celebrating about 300 yards away on the final green, having just been conceded birdie by Josh Duangmanee to seal a 2-up victory and the clinching point in Oklahoma State’s 4-1 triumph in front of a raucous group of about 200 supporters, who, in the words of sophomore Gaven Lane, “overpowered” the Cavalier contingent all day and out-roared their weight well into the trophy presentation.
How ‘bout them Cowboys!
“It’s overwhelming,” Eric Lee said. “I haven’t heard a crowd that loud in a while, or ever, actually. It’s a cool feeling, and it’s great to be a national champion with all these guys.”
Bratton’s heroics in 1995 ensured that he and fellow senior Chris Tidland avoided becoming the first players to play under then coach Mike Holder for four years and not win a national title. This year’s Cowboys, loaded with talent but also a youthful squad with no seniors or juniors starting in the postseason, had contributed to the longest win drought in program history before snapping their 19-tournament skid at last fall’s Jackson T. Stephens Cup. That was the moment, Bratton said, when it all came together. The Cowboys carried that momentum into their spring opener in Hawaii and won that event, too. They’d end this season with six total tournament titles, a No. 2 national ranking and a pair of first-team All-Americans in Fang and sophomore Preston Stout, who a few weeks earlier had captured his second straight Big 12 medal despite battling flu-like symptoms in the final round.
Stout won his first two matches, in the quarterfinals against Oklahoma and in the semis, before falling to three-time first-teamer Ben James, 3 and 2, in the third match Wednesday. That was the only point Virginia would get, though not for lack of competitiveness.
Playing in their first-ever final, the 10th-ranked Cavaliers, ranked in the same spot as the Northwestern women a week earlier, quickly jumped ahead in each of the last four matches against college golf’s modern-day dynasty – Oklahoma State is now tied for the third-most national titles, which have come in an NCAA-record 76 appearances, and also owns a dozen Big 12 titles; Virginia just notched its first ACC Championship win in 72 years last month.
The only exception was the leadoff match, where Filip Fahlberg Johnsson found himself in a comfortable position. Bratton wanted to send his most experienced match-play guy out first, and that ended up being the Swedish freshman, who has a relationship with countryman Leif Westerberg, the former Cowboy who famously left for the British Amateur after 72 holes of that 1995 championship, leaving Oklahoma State to play off against Stanford with just four players.
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The uber-confident Fahlberg Johnsson, who was seemingly not afraid to exhibit a bit of gamesmanship, won the first hole against fellow first-year Maxi Puregger before closing out the Austrian, 3 and 1, and capping a 3-0 performance that included a scrappy 21st-hole victory over Ole Miss’ Cameron Tankersley in a match that wrapped up in the dark. The finish was reminiscent of the Cowboys’ 2019 NCAA semifinal bout with Texas at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Zach Bauchou lipped out a putt after the sun had set to end a dominant Oklahoma State squad’s run at back-to-back national titles.
A year before that, at the 2018 NCAA Championship, Bauchou opened his final match with a front-nine 29 to set the tone in the Cowboys’ 5-0 rout of Alabama in front of thousands of home fans at Karsten Creek. Bratton occasionally breaks out his orange polo from that victory for big events, and he did the same Wednesday, though the top remained under a black jacket with the marine layer never burning off and temperatures remaining in the 50s.
Another message Bratton delivered to his players on the eve of Wednesday’s final was to “channel their inner Bauchou.” His squad wasn’t short on inspiration. Rickie Fowler, perhaps the most recognizable Cowboy alum, texted with Bratton all week and even shared some screenshots of a conversation he was having with cycling legend Lance Armstrong, who was glued to Tuesday’s coverage (Bratton did have to inform some of his players who that was). Viktor Hovland also was watching from the clubhouse at Muirfield Village.
And Kuehne, one of the greatest career amateurs of all-time, flew out Wednesday morning to potentially witness destiny fulfilled again. He wasn’t disappointed.
Lane trailed 2 down after seven holes before birdieing five of his final eight to post the day’s most convincing result, a 4-and-3 win over Paul Chang, who spent three years on Virginia’s club team before earning his spot two summers ago. Fang won four straight holes on the back nine to flip his match while Eric Lee birdied three of his final four holes.
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Fang, a Texas native, had strongly considered Oklahoma State during his recruiting process before his buddy Lee convinced him to join him at Cal. But a week into school, Fang’s car was broken into. “I quickly found out that I wasn’t a big city guy,” said Fang, who would enter the transfer portal following Cal’s NCAA exit last year at La Costa. He returned the favor, too, dragging Lee with him to Stillwater. “We call it even now,” Lee quipped.
Fang remembers Bratton’s pitch last summer: “If you want to win a national championship, you got to come to Oklahoma State.”
“And he was right,” Fang added.
Stratton Nolen can attest. The current Cowboys assistant was a reserve on that 2018 Oklahoma State team that has sent five players to the PGA Tour, including Hovland and fellow Tour winners Matt Wolff and Austin Eckroat. It was Nolen who reminded Eric Lee, with Lee tied with Duangmanee on the 15th tee, to “believe in your destiny.”
About an hour later, that destiny was realized.
The only difference was Balicki wasn’t around to write about it.
Balicki died from cancer in 2014 at age 65. When it came to covering college golf, Balicki was a pioneer. Players adored him, trusted him; Fowler made just one phone call to announce he was turning pro, to Balicki, who returned that love in spades. One summer, when told he couldn’t travel to the Northeast Amateur, Balicki informed his boss he’d be taking vacation to cover it anyway. His last NCAA Championship came in 2013 – he picked undefeated Cal, which lost in the semifinals to Alabama.
Bratton gives Balicki a lot of credit for where the sport is today – million-dollar facilities, private jets, six-figure NIL deals, televised tournaments on Golf Channel. He shed a rare tear talking about Balicki on Wednesday morning, and about 12 hours later, he closed his winning interview by remembering Wrong Ron.
“I’ve been thinking about him all week, and what a special guy,” Bratton said. “We don’t have all this without somebody telling the story of college golf, and Ron Balicki did it like nobody else.”
Even long after his death, Balicki is still inspiring national champions.
