After the WKU Women’s Golf program made headlines this past weekend with an opening tournament win, the men’s team will look to do more of the same when they travel to Louisiana Tech University on Sunday to get their 2020-2021 campaign underway.

WKU Head Coach Chan Metts returns for his third year at the helm with a ton of optimism when talking about his roster. 

“What we’re looking for I guess, more individually from a program standpoint, is more depth. That’s something that we have been lacking the last couple of years,” Metts said in a Zoom press conference.

“We got a bigger roster than we’ve had the first two seasons I was here, so I really hope to see some more competition for those, you know, four, five, and six spots on our roster,” Metts added.

That supposedly larger crew consists of a mixture of veterans and newcomers.

As for the veterans, redshirt senior and last year’s team captain Tom Bevington is back after accepting the NCAA’s invitation to return for another year after his season was cut short last year due to COVID-19

Bevington will once again lead as captain, but he is not alone in the department. Senior Caleb O’Toole and Graduate transfer Christian Tooley will join Bevington as being part of the leadership team.

Tooley, coming from Kentucky Wesleyan College, has already earned a huge amount of respect from coach Metts.

“We are very lucky to have had a situation work out where we’re able to have Christian here for a year,” Metts said. “His leadership has been extremely apparent on and off the golf course. His playing ability has kind of spoken for itself through qualifying.”

Not only does it seem like Metts has become very fond of his new secret weapon, but Tooley also gives off that he very much so loves his coaches, teammates, and school already.

“I love it. I like a lot of the guys on the team. We got a good mix very similar to the women’s team, we got some young guys, we got some older guys, so I mean we know what the expectation is and I really like being on campus and everything.” Tooley said.

During his four years as a Panther, Tooley led the team in scoring average, which gives the idea that Bevington, O’Toole, and Tooley could potentially form an impressive “Big Three” this season. Now, for the young stallions.

The brunt of the freshman productivity, at least shown from the early team practices, is going to come from Connery Meyer and Davis Money. Metts says that he has been impressed with all of his new guys though, that also involves Aaron Pha and Mark Brown.

“All of our freshmen have shot really good scores that I’m happy to see… I’ve definitely seen some flashes of greatness from everybody,” Metts said.

Greatness is something that will be in the search bar for the team this year with the loss of WKU’s great Linus Lo, and the squad not having a finish better than third place last season.

The swagger of the WKU Women’s Golf program could rub off on the Men’s lineup when they head down to the bayou this weekend.  

Women’s basketball beat reporter Matthew Hargrove can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewHargrov1