Why is the Mid-American Conference playing its men’s golf championship in Athens…Alabama?

Well, a date mixup is the No. 1 reason. Ohio University is the host this season and the tournament was originally scheduled at Columbus Country Club, but the course misunderstood and thought it was in 2024, not 2023.

So first-year Ohio coach Brennan Whitis — who apprenticed under Toledo coach Jeff Roope — went to Plan B: take the tournament to warm weather in the South.

“I looked at it as an opportunity,” Whitis said. “This will be my fifth MAC championship. I wanted to see if we could go somewhere south and not have to sit and worry about, what are we going to do when it’s 31 degrees? It’s an experiment that I’m hoping works and we can pull together and find some spots that will host us down south.”

All one had to do was look at the numbers — the temperature and the scores — from Day 1 of the Big Ten men’s golf championships in Galloway, N.J., to understand why the MAC was leaving its footprint.

The wind chill and wind gusts were in the 30s, and a lot of scores were in the 80s. The average was higher than 78, with 24 of 70 players shooting 80 or worse. Only one player broke par. 

It was decidedly better at the Canebrake Club in Athens, Ala., on Sunday for the first round of the MAC championship. Under partly sunny skies, with temperatures in the 60s, there were three rounds in the 80s and more than half the field shot 74 or better.

Bowling Green is tied for first at 3 over par. Toledo is in last, but only 11 shots separate the Falcons and Rockets.

The MAC has endured its own weather horror stories. In 2018 at Sycamore Hills in Fort Wayne, Ind., players had to brave blustery conditions as temperatures hovered just above freezing. Fifty-eight of 179 rounds — one player was disqualified — were in the 80s, an astonishingly high number.

“It was more survival of the fittest,” Roope said. “It was not good golf being played.”

The following year wasn’t much better. At Club Walden in northeast Ohio, a deluge created conditions that normally would have canceled a tournament if an NCAA tournament berth wasn’t on the line. Two days of golf were completely wiped out.

“The golf course was unplayable,” Roope said. “We were losing balls in the fairways sinking in the mud. It was just awful. We handed out an NCAA bid in 36 holes of golf in horrible conditions. We had players changing their pants at the turn because they were caked in mud.”

In 2021, the tournament format changed to 54 holes over three days, allowing for 36 in one day if necessary.

“This is certainly one of the championships given where it falls in the calendar that it maybe makes sense to look and see if we can move a little bit south,” MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said. “I’m pretty consistent with our schools — I like championships to be in our communities and on our campuses unless there’s some really specific reason not to. Well, this is something that makes sense.”

The OU administration was harder to convince. They viewed Whitis’ idea with a dose of skepticism, the new coach with a hokey outside-the-box idea. But it wasn’t completely new.

The Horizon League plays its tournament in Florida, and prior to coronavirus, the MAC discussed centralizing its men’s and women’s championships in the Sunshine State. The pandemic ended that possibility.

Enter Columbus Country Club’s date mishap.

Whitis first looked for a replacement in Columbus and Cincinnati before deciding that now was the time to take a bold step. So he identified potential venues in Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Florida was eliminated because it would have required all nine teams to fly. The tournament operates under a cost-sharing model, with each school spending an equal amount. The Blade’s request for this year’s costs went unanswered from MAC spokesman Jeremy Guy.

That Canebrake is located in Athens, Ala., is a coincidence.

“Our folks are engaged with junior and college golf,” said Canebrake GM Micky Wolfe. “We’ve been fortunate to send 30 kids in the 12 years that I’ve been here to go on and play college golf. So they follow a lot of those kids and they’re excited. They’ll be out here. They’re volunteering. They’ll be following them around.”

Alums from several MAC schools who live in the area contacted Wolfe in the weeks leading up to the event interested in attending. He believes the same level of curiosity will manifest in the club’s junior golfers, opening their eyes to a different region of the country and a collection of programs that previously went unnoticed.

“What I’ve told kids here is, if you can get past not going to Alabama or Auburn, there are endless opportunities to play college golf,” Wolfe said. “I wanted to get these MAC schools down here so our kids have an opportunity to see those schools. I think it’ll be good exposure.”

Additional costs for playing in Alabama compared to Ohio are not significant. There aren’t additional hotel nights. Food costs are no different. For most teams, a few extra tanks of gas is the biggest expenditure. Toledo chose to fly to nearby Huntsville, Ala., after a season filled with eight-hour and nine-hour drives.

If this year’s tournament is a success, moving the event to a warm-weather location could become permanent. It’s already on the docket to discuss at the MAC’s spring meetings.

The next two years — hosted by Toledo and BGSU — are scheduled in the Midwest. The 2024 tournament will be at the Club at Chatham Hills in Westfield, Ind., and 2025 will be at Pinnacle, just outside Columbus.

“It wouldn’t bother me because there’s the logistics of trying to run the whole event,” Roope said. “I’m already working on hotel rooms, pricing, food and beverage, and everything else for next year. We don’t have the administrative logistics to peel somebody off and have them work on nothing but the MAC championships, and I don’t think any other schools do either. It takes a lot of resources to run the tournament.”

First Published April 30, 2023, 11:06 p.m.