For the first time in 27 years, the Florida men’s golf team will have a different leader, as J.C. Deacon is taking over as head coach for Buddy Alexander.
Deacon served as an assistant coach at his alma mater — the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — for four years before accepting the head coaching position with the Gators.
The new coach will have big shoes to fill, as Alexander guided Florida to two national titles and eight Southeastern Conference titles during his tenure.
But Deacon didn’t come to UF to replace Alexander, and he knows that no one can completely follow in the footsteps of someone who brought as much success to Florida as Alexander did.
"I’m not going to replace Buddy Alexander," Deacon said. "No one in the world can replace Buddy Alexander, legend, done an incredible job, won two national championships. He’s one of the best coaches that’s ever been in college golf."
What Deacon does bring is someone who is young and someone who has a fiery personality.
"I’m going to bring a lot of energy to the table, I’m going to demand hard work," the 31-year-old coach said. "Our guys are already doing a great job living up to my expectations and we’re going to try and work harder than everyone in the country."
Deacon inherits a team which returns eight players from last year’s squad that have playing experience.
Leading the team is senior J.D. Tomlinson, who paced Florida last year with a 72.55 stroke average. Even though he was arguably the best player on last year’s team, Tomlinson made it a point to get better in the offseason.
"I made a couple of swing changes, which took the whole summer, which I’m really happy about," Tomlinson said. "I played some tournaments around the country and I just really worked on my game and kind of put my head down and made some changes."
Tomlinson will be counted on to continue his strong play heading into this season along with fellow senior Eric Banks, who finished with a 73.50 stroke average — good enough for second on the team.
Sophomore Ryan Orr played in every tournament last season, and finished first on the team with two eagles and finished second with 75 birdies in his freshman year.
"Coming in my goal was to just qualify for some tournaments, and to be able to play in all of them was awesome and it gave me a lot of experience," Orr said. "Getting to play against the best players in the country was a really good experience."
Florida didn’t qualify for the NCAA Golf Championships last year. The last time that happened was in 2000. The next year, the program won its second national title under Alexander.
UF will be using the four tournaments in the fall season as a springboard to get back to the NCAAs in the spring. Deacon says the team has been putting in the effort to get back to the Golf Championships.
"The whole point of why we’re doing this and putting in all of this time and hard work is to get to nationals and compete at the highest level," Deacon said. "We got to find a way to get back there, but the way we’re going to do that is do all the little things."
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J.D. Tomlinson tees off on Day 2 of the SunTrust Gator Invitational on Feb. 16 at the Mark Bostick Golf Course.
