There is no definitive book of college golf records, just a patchwork assortment of sports information directors with various historic scrapbooks that they share among themselves to try to identify whether something has occurred before or not.
So it is that the record many believe Malan Potgieter is setting as he plays in this week’s NCAA Championship must come with the caveat of “unofficial.” Yet it doesn’t make it any less impressive.
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Potgieter, a 23-year-old South African native who is a senior at Louisiana, begins Sunday’s third round at Omni La Costa’s North Course in the midst of a stretch of 91 straight holes without a bogey. The streak started on the last hole of the Sun Belt Championship.
He then went on to play in the NCAA Regional in Athens, going all 54 holes bogey-free to tie for medalist honors and earn his individual spot in the NCAA Championship.
Through two rounds at La Costa, Potgieter is eight under par, tied for second place two shots back of Arizona State’s Filip Jakubcik.
So is it a record? And whose record has Potgieter broken? Again, that’s where the patchwork comes into play. College golf cognoscenti has come together to dig up a streak of 74 straight holes that Alabama’s Bobby Wyatt collected in 2014 during Mason Rudolph Championship, the SEC Championship and the first one of NCAA regionals. (Coincidentally, Potgieter is playing alongside Alabama’s William Jennings with Crimson Tide coach Jay Seawell, Wyatt’s old college coach, watching.)
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In men’s professional golf, such streaks are more reliably tracked. Tiger Woods holds the men’s professional record with 110 straight during his amazing run in 2000, while Jin Young Ko has the top mark in women’s professional golf with a run of 114 holes back in 2019.
“This all just reinforces that I’m a good ball-striker and my golf IQ is pretty good,” Potgieter, who is no relation to Aldrich Potgieter on the PGA Tour, told Golf Channel. “I have a strong mind to when I am under pressure, I can stay calm and patient. It’s nice to not make bogeys. Even like today, I feel like I didn’t play that great, didn’t make that many putts, but I’m still in contention because I didn’t make any bogeys.”
The most nervous Potgieter might have been that his streak was coming to an end on Saturday was on the par-4 first hole, his 10th of the day. His drive wound up in the right fescue and he punch his second shot out short of the green. His third shot finished five feet from the hole and he rolled it in for the up-and-down par save.
Potgieter acknowledges he was a poor putter in high school who only started getting better after his sophomore year at Louisiana when he switched to a broomstick putter.
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Theo Sliman, the Ragin’ Cajuns coach, says that Potgieter is the best player mentally that he’s ever been around, arriving in college with a maturity that he knew would take him far. He’s shown steady improvement from a 73 shooter upon arriving in the U.S. to an adjusted scoring average of 68.7 entering nationals as an individual.
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According to a story in Golfweek, Sliman has an arrangement with his players that if they card a bogey-free round, he cooks streaks for this players while giving the rest of his team hot dogs. Sliman knows he owns Potgieter a lot of steaks in the near future.
“I think I’m going to have to get half a cow,” Sliman said. “I’m not going to the local grocery store. I’m going to the butcher.”
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