Home-grown golf talents Keaton Vo, Nathan Petronzio lead Texas men into NCAA Tournament
Texas men's golf coach John Fields might have grown up surrounded by the deserts of southern New Mexico, but the Las Cruces native has been in Austin long enough to understand the city’s vibrant golf culture.
Heck, he’s helped develop it during his 27 years as the Longhorns' coach.
Fields’ long résumé while leading the Longhorns includes 21 NCAA championship appearances, two national titles and an impressive cache of professionals such as current PGA stars Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler.
But can a couple of Austin-bred players help Fields’ team make another championship run in the NCAA Tournament, in which Texas will tee off Monday in the Austin Regional at the University of Texas Golf Club in Steiner Ranch?
“We’ve got quality across the board,” Fields said.
That’s an understatement, considering Texas had five players finish in the top 18 while winning its first Big 12 title since 2017 at the conference tournament in late April at Whispering Pines Golf Club in Trinity. Christian Maas, a sophomore from South Africa, has been ranked as high as No. 12 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings while towering Tommy Morrison is a 6-foot-9-inch driving machine from Frisco whose precision matches his power. Graduate student Brian Stark, from California’s San Joaquin Valley, provides steady poise after earning All-American honors at Oklahoma State and then transferring to Texas before last season.
And then there’s the pair of Austinites, sophomore Keaton Vo and graduate student Nathan Petronzio, who joined Stark in earning All-Big 12 honors after tying for eighth at 4-under-par 284 at Whispering Pines.
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Keaton Vo, Nathan Petronzio homegrown talent for Texas golf
Fields perks up when talking about the potential of Vo, an Anderson graduate and arguably the top youth player from Texas in his 2022 high school class. He won the individual Class 5A state gold medal as a senior while also leading the Trojans to a team title. He carried that momentum to the Texas campus, competing in 13 of the Longhorns’ 14 events as a freshman and registering a 72.55 stroke average. He even carded a hole-in-one at last year’s NCAA Bath Regional in Michigan.
There's been no sophomore slump this season for Vo, who has played in eight of Texas’ first 12 events and sports a 73.05 stroke average. He’s shot par or better in eight of his 21 rounds this year and seems to be peaking at the right time, posting his season-low 18-hole score of 4-under 68 in the final round of the Big 12 Championship.
“Well, he's got a high ceiling,” Fields said. “He drives it really well, (and) he is a really fine ball striker.”
Better yet, Vo is beginning to match up the mental approach to the game with his shot-making, Fields said.
“I think he's got to refine his thought process out there on the golf course,” the coach said. “It's just about consistency making great decisions. He may never look back once it starts happening. So that's the equation right now; he's doing a great job.”
Petronzio, an all-state golfer at Lake Travis, transferred to Texas after earning All-American Athletic Conference honors at SMU. He has adapted well to again playing in his hometown; he's No. 63 in the latest World Amateur Golf Ranking, he has competed in 10 of UT’s first 12 events this season, and he leads the team in scoring average with a 71.28 while tallying three top-10 and six top-25 individual finishes.
“And he's just now getting his feet on the ground (at Texas),” Fields said. “He's special.”
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Do any Texas golfers have ‘it’?
But how special can Vo and Petronzio be, especially when considering their potential places in an echelon topped by Spieth and Scheffler as well as UT golfing legends and Austin natives Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite, who led the Longhorns to back-to-back national titles in 1971 and 1972?
Such success remains to be seen, Fields said. Confidence matters more than any club, he said. Belief means more than any number of birdies.
“A lot of people might have the talent and the ability, maybe even the right circumstances, but for whatever reason, it's just not right,” Fields said. “For whatever reason, Jordan and Scottie, it’s planted in their mind that it’s OK to be doing what they’re doing. I think Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw were in that same category, where it was just OK to do what they did.
“There are guys with those kinds of abilities that never achieved that status, and I think just simply because of the belief. With regards to Scottie and Jordan, I think whatever they have, that intrinsic belief, I call it delusional confidence. Because you don't know where it comes from. And you can't really explain it. It's kind of like ‘it,’ right? I don't know why, but they have it.”
NCAA Austin Regional
No. 13 Texas is the No. 3 seed and will be one of 13 teams competing at the UT Golf Club on Monday through Wednesday.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Local golf talents Keaton Vo, Nathan Petronzio lead Texas into NCAAs
