After program first, No. 1 Ole Miss must now prove itself ‘the dudes’

The night before Ole Miss was set to host Oklahoma on the gridiron, Chris Malloy was hanging with some buddies on his back porch. The Rebels men’s golf coach had been tabbed to “Lock the Vaught,” a pregame tradition at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in which an honoree presses a button on the field and Ole Miss fans follow by locking arms and swaying to music.

But Malloy didn’t want to try and hype up a football crowd wearing golf clothes, especially with Halloween just a few days away.

“It was one of those things like, What am I going to do with my hands?” Malloy said. “So, I tell my buddies, I wish I had something to rip off, or something like that.”

One of Malloy’s friends responded: “Well, I’ve got an Evel Knievel outfit.”

Malloy then asked: “Does it have a cape?”

“Yup,” answered the friend. “And I’ve got a helmet.”

Malloy: “If you can get that thing to me in the morning, I’ll wear it.”

“And sure enough,” Malloy recounts, “I get a photo texted to me at 6:30 in the morning, and he had hung the outfit on my front door with the message: Ball’s in your court.”

Malloy then called his athletic director, Keith Carter, and asked, “Would this be a fire-able offense, or somewhat funny?”

Carter answered: “Well, at this point, it’s a fire-able offense if you don’t do it.”

So, Malloy threw on the white, leather attire, tied the cape around his neck, strapped on the helmet and slid on some mirrored, google-like sunglasses, and headed to the sideline for his big stunt.

Rebel Nation, are we ready to show these Sooners what it’s about?!

Malloy’s Rebels have already put the rest of college golf on notice, recently making the jump to No. 1 in the national rankings for the first time in program history. In its four fall tournaments, Ole Miss has won twice and finished second in its other two starts while boasting all five starters in the top 100 of the individual rankings.

“We’ve talked about for years with this program – and I think we’re there – we want to get to an event and know we’re the dudes. I remember coming up in college golf, you’d go to tournaments and Stanford or Oklahoma State would put their bags down, and everyone else would take notice… Hopefully, this ranking helps them understand that we are the guy, that if we take care of our business, we’re going to be hard to beat, and we don’t have to play well and hope that this team or that team doesn’t play well. And that’s a big thing.”

That hasn’t necessarily been the case. Just once in their past six trips to NCAA regionals have the Rebels advanced to the NCAA Championship. Last spring, Ole Miss fell a shot short of nationals, capping a disappointing end of the season that also saw the Rebels miss match play at the SEC Championship after several players, including first-team All-America candidate Michael La Sasso, contract a stomach virus.

La Sasso had only finished worse than T-11 once in eight starts before withdrawing from the first round in Sea Island. He still wasn’t right at regionals and tied for 62nd at Stanford Golf Course, and after only being named as second-team All-American, the poor close to his spring bled into the summer, where La Sasso didn’t sniff match play at the Western and U.S. amateurs.

“I was never concerned about Mike,” Malloy said. “I felt confident that once he got back into his bubble here and back into this environment where he did have so much success last year, that he would start to gain some confidence and pick it up piece by piece, and he certainly has.”

La Sasso’s fall was highlighted by his 11-shot victory at the Hamptons Intercollegiate, and he had three other top-11 showings. But unlike last season, La Sasso hasn’t been required to put on a cape of his own and carry the whole team; the Rebels has four other players with at least two top-10s this fall, including LSU transfer Cohen Trolio, once a highly ranked junior who had lost his game and confidence in recent years. When Trolio arrived in Oxford this summer, Malloy’s priority was to help the senior, whose younger brother Collins also plays for Ole Miss, rediscover his mojo. Walking most rounds this fall with Trolio, Malloy has been amazed by the transfer’s driving accuracy and optimism. Trolio bogeyed each of his last two holes of his Rebel debut, slipping to T-29 at the Visit Knoxville Collegiate, but since then he’s not placed worse than T-9.

“He’s just been so consistent for us, and probably at all four tournaments, that might’ve been the worst he could’ve finished,” Malloy said. “I look for him to continue that trend and have a breakout spring.”

Malloy isn’t shy to admit that last year’s team looked like “deer in headlights” at times. The Rebels were young, comprised mostly of transfers and underclassmen, and folded under the late adversity. His message to his players at their first team meeting in August was to not run away from what happened last spring.

“I want us to be comfortable being uncomfortable,” Malloy said.

It doesn’t get more uncomfortable than being No. 1.

“They still have to get used to it, for sure,” Malloy added, “but the only way to do that is by getting there. And I guess time will tell, if we’re being honest, but they’ve handled it great so far. They haven’t changed anything. They’re still working their butts off. We’ve tried getting the clubs out of their hands and getting them to rest and they’re not really having any of that right now.

“They know that they still have something to prove.”