The Transfers: OSU's Eugenio Chacara OU, Chris Gotterup have teams poised for run at national championship

from 2022 Golf Oklahoma Apr/May

COLLEGE PREVIEW OSU, OU hunt for national championship Broomstick has Chacarra flying

by ken macleod

Combine boyhood tips from Seve, weekly swing dissections with Sergio, broomstick lessons from Aaron Wise, a broken wrist and 200 pairs of outlandish socks and what do you get?

Meet Oklahoma State’s Eugenio Chacarra, a 21-year-old senior brimming with confidence and enthusiasm and sporting a short list of goals that begins with a second collegiate victory and ends with him topping the world golf rankings.

The sweet-swinging Spaniard took boyhood lessons from Seve Ballesteros’ brother, Vincente as a beginner which allowed him to meet and get pointers from Seve, though he was already sick with cancer. Later, he took lessons from Sergio Garcia’s father, Victor, and developed a strong friendship with Sergio that endures today,

His wrist injury at age 15 derailed a promising soccer career. Concentrating just on golf, Chacarra developed into a creative, versatile ball striker, a throwback to a time when players routinely worked the ball left, right, high and low rather than overpowering courses with towering dsdrives and wedges.

“Eugenio is very unique among today’s players in that regard,” said OSU coach Alan Bratton. “He’s very creative and can manufacture shots that others don’t even contemplate.”

There was just one problem. Chacarra could not putt, at least not well enough to win anything significant. It got to the point where he struggled to make a 2-footer, threeputting from short range twice down the stretch of a 19-hole loss to Oklahoma freshman Jaxon Dowell in the 2021 finals of the East Lake Cup.

Poor putting led to him missing the cut by eight shots when he got an opportunity last fall to play in the PGA Tour’s World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba, Mexico. But it was where he met Wise, who uses a 47-inch Odyssey two-ball putter and the broomstick method similar to ageless German wonder Bernhard Langer.

Desperate for something that would work, he gave it a try.

“It felt strange, horrible,” Chacarra said. “Just super weird. But I felt if I grind with it when I go home over winter break, we will see what happens. I took it to Spain and practiced at least two hours every day. “

Sure enough, Chacarra started to make putts. Then more putts. Then course records started to fall.

After shooting some crazy low rounds in Spain, he returned to school and promptly set a course record in the Cowboys’ first event, shooting a 62 in the final round of the Amer Ari Invitational on the Hapuna Golf Course in Kamuela, Hawaii. Remarkably his younger sister Caroline, a freshman at Wake Forest, matched his final-round score with a 62 of her own three days later in the UCF Challenge to win her first event as a collegian. It wasn’t the first time they had struck gold within days of each other. When Eugenio won the under-18 championship in Spain, Caroline responded by winning the under-16 title the same week.

Next up was the Gators Invitational in Gainesville, Fla. Using an unfamiliar driver because his was cracked, Chacarra sprayed his tee shots, but his putter led to an 8-birdie final-round 65 and a tie for third. Since then he has finished ninth in the Cabo Collegiate, 32nd in the General Hackler, then won the N.I.T. at Omni, Tucson by five shots.

“He’s a really good ballstriker,” said former OSU All-American and now PGA Tour winner Talor Gooch. “He’s going to be a really good pro.”

To say the change in putting style has unleashed him would be an understatement.

“Now my mind thinks I can make everything,” Chacarra said. “It has completely changed my game. I get on the green and have a 30-footer and think I can make it, where before I would have a 2-footer and be nervous. It’s been ridiculously good and I’m excited for the future.”

When Chacarra came to the U.S. after winning over 100 junior tournaments, his intent was to enroll at Stanford, but his ACT scores were not quite there. He found a spot at Wake Forest and helped the Demon Deacons reach the match-play portion of the NCAA Championships in 2019, where they lost ironically to Stanford. He was the ACC Freshman of the Year and had six top-10 finishes.

After the COVID-shortened 2019-20 sea-

son, he entered the transfer portal and Bratton was happy to offer him a new home in Stillwater, having just lost Viktor Hovland, Matthew Wolfe, Zach Bauchou, Hayden Wood, Brendon Jelley, Sam Stevens and others from the teams that won the NCAA Championship in 2018 and the stroke-play portion of the same by 31 shots in 2019. Now with Austin Eckroat on to the pro ranks, it’s a vastly different squad, 12 deep with stars from across the globe, including Germany (2), China, Japan, Spain, Dubai, Denmark, India and the U.S., including Oklahoman Jordan Wilson. “We’ve got 12 really good players and the lineup could change every event,” Chacarra said. “If we can keep getting tougher, keep listening to the coaches and what they tell us, I think we have a good chance to win the national championship.” That would only increase Chacarra’s popularity on campus. He already is a familiar face to athletes from all the programs, making it a point to attend their events and offer his enthusiastic support. His trademark attire is shorts and one of his 200 pairs of often zany Eugenior Chacarra socks featuring cartoon characters or logos. “They all represent the brand, the school and the logo and they deserve our support,” Chacarra said. “It’s a great way to meet them and to make new friends.” In his phone are a short list of goals, starting with winning two or more times in college, followed by a top-five finish in PGA Tour University, first team All-American, winning the NCAA Championship, achieving a GPA over 3.0 and playing well in the starts he is afforded on the PGA Tour. Longer term goals include winning on the PGA Tour and eventually being ranked No. 1 in the world. Chacarra figures his ball striking already is the equal of most in the game. If the broomstick is a long-term solution to his putting, watch out. One obstacle to one of his immediate goals – winning the national championship – is just 70 miles away in the form of the currently top-ranked OU Sooners. Chacarra is friends with many of their top players, competes against them both in tournaments and in friendly games at Oak Tree National, and welcomes a potential Bedlam match in the NCAA Championships. “I like the rivalry,” he said. “I like all their players and coaches, but we’re competitive. I know they’re working hard. I tell my team, these guys want to beat us, but we’re better than them. We’ve got to trust ourselves, keep working hard, and things will work out.”

Gotterup: "The piece we needed"

by sam humphreys

It was expected that it would take a few months for coach Ryan Hybl’s University of Oklahoma golf team to rebuild after losing future pros Quade Cummins, Garett Reband and Jonathan Brightwell from the squad that lost to Pepperdine in the NCAA Championship finals last spring.

OU, however, with AllAmerican returnee Logan McAllister, has won four of the first six events in 2021-22, leads both polls and looks like the nation’s best and deepest team.

Going into the season there was the hope that Patrick Welch would regain his form after going through some physical and mental woes with his putting stroke last spring. And there was great young talent in fabulous freshman Drew Goodman and second-year players Ben Lorenz, Stephen Campbell Jr. and Jaxon Dowell.

If anything was missing, it was one more steely veteran to replace the gritty play OU received last year from Brightwell. And once again, Hybl found exactly what he was looking for in the transfer portal.

Chris Gotterup, former Big Ten Conference Player of the Year at Rutgers, had put his name in the portal after finishing four

years with the Scarlet Knights, hoping for a chance to play for an NCAA Championship. “I fulfilled my four-year commitment at Rutgers, and saw an opportunity that was better for me at Oklahoma,” Gotterup said. “Everything aligned properly.” Hybl rushed back from the disappointing final in the NCAA Championship to meet Gotterup at the airport, not wanting to be late for their first date. What he found was a young man who was determined to earn his spot, embrace Hybl’s vaunted work ethic and prove to his new teammates that he belonged. “I told Chris from the start that if he was looking for a Chris Gotterup has Sooners primed for NCAA Championship. guaranteed spot, he was at the wrong place,” Hybl said. “And he embraced that. He wanted to be challenged and compete every day. “He comes out in our first qualifier and gets to 30-under par and beats everyone

by seven or eight and that immediately set the tone. There was no questioning at all after that. They saw how he was working on the course and in the training room. From a coach’s perspective, it was a dream scenario.”

McAllister says flatly that Gotterup was “the extra piece we needed. We all got along instantly, and everyone was super positive after the transfer. Last year, Jonathan Brightwell transferred in and put us in a better spot to compete for a national championship. This year, Chris has done the same.”

Gotterup says that the team chemistry at Oklahoma has made it easy to fit in and it’s hard to argue with the results. In its first six events, OU won four, and finished second and third in the other two.

Gotterup tied for 14th in his first event, then placed third and made the winning putt at the Maridoe Collegiate. He tied for third again at Colonial, was co-medalist in the East Lake Cup and delivered the winning point in a Bedlam match-play final against the Oklahoma State Cowboys, then blazed his way to a record-shattering 20-under performance to win the Puerto Rico Classic at Grand Reserve Golf Club.

After a tie for 50th while his teammates were taking care of business in the Southern Highlands Collegiate in Las Vegas, Gotterup returned to Grand Preserve on an exemption into the PGA Tour’s Puerto Rico Open. Once again, he put on a show, fin-

ishing tied for seventh.

Gotterup became the first amateur in five years to finish in a PGA Tour event’s top 10. When asked if he wishes he could have kept the paycheck from his finish, Gotterup with a rye smile said, “I could’ve used $100,000, but that experience was worth more than money to me.”

He has since added another top-10 finish, tying for ninth in the N.I.T. at Omni Tucson.

Assuming the top-ranked Sooners make it through regionals, this will be Gotterup’s first NCAA National Championship.

“I haven’t thought about it yet, but it will be exciting and exactly what we signed up for,” Gotterup said.

Gotterup ranked 14th in the PGA Tour University rankings in mid-March, but with a chance to move up as the Sooners head into the postseason. “It’s important to let everything fall into place, and if I think about it too much, bad things will probably happen,” Gotterup said.

While Gotterup’s transition to the team was seamless, he does have moments where he misses the “chaos” of the Northeast, and you can hear much more from him on his background and personal life on the 73rd Hole Podcast from March 8.

Notes: The emergence of Gotterup alongside McAllister, Welch and freshman Drew Goodman would seem to lock up four of the five spots for the postseason, with Ben Lorenz, Stephen Campbell Jr. and Jaxon Dowell battling for the final spot. Lorenz started and played well in the postseason a year ago. But all three could start for most teams and it could be whoever has the hot hand in May.