(Inspirational music)
- [Golf Member] We're in Memphis International Airport.
We're heading to Phoenix right now.
That's the next stop between here and Hawaii.
- [Golf Member] I think we have,
well I'm guessing,
three and a half hours to Phoenix and then
probably six or six and a half over to Hawaii.
I'm going to try to sleep,
that usually doesn't help.
I'm just going to listen to some music the entire way.
I had to go off of my Ipod,
which is pretty much straight Rae Sremmurd and
Lil Wayne right now,
so we'll just see how that goes.
- [Intercom] We're going to be underway here shortly.
6 hours and 21 minutes is our enroute flying time.
We welcome aboard Flight 684,
non-stop service to Lihue.
- Ted, what are we doing?
- [Ted] We're about to do a really long flight.
Not looking forward to it,
but once we're done,
we'll be in Hawaii.
Looking forward to that.
(Hawaiian music)
- [Narrator] In golf,
the practice rounds are all about staying loose.
- Perfect.
Oh, please go.
You think White Beatles is one of the best songs of
the year?
- Ya ya I'll go with that.
- Okay, ya.
- You know what would be really cool to do?
Go surfing.
Fly a kite surfing.
- The next hole's going to be a good one.
- Alright head's up.
I have no idea where this might go.
- What if we kite surfed?
- That'd be probably even cooler.
- Saucy.
- As a general rule of thumb in golf,
you'd like to hit in the fairway.
As you can see,
I'm a little bit left of this one.
This isn't even our hole,
but that's okay.
- I'm pretty sure my grandma had that same cart.
- I don't ever really get out there and start
focusing so much on myself and what's going on
with my swing or anything.
It's just more taking into account everything
around you,
just assessing the greens,
the fairways,
how it's playing the wind.
- [Golfing Member] Let's say Ben hits it right of the green,
he's like oh this is an easy chip to this pin.
We might go look at that.
That's just for future knowledge in the rounds.
Somebody hits it in the bunker here to
a certain pin,
you can't get up and down,
stuff like that.
You just work your way off of that and keep as many
mental notes as you can.
- Ya that's the whole point is trying to get the
advantage of I got a club now that's not going to get
me to that,
but see the grass there.
- Great job, Ben.
- Thanks.
- [Narrator] After 3 years of carrying the flag
for the Rebels,
seniors Noah West and Ben Walcott have emerged
as leaders of the team.
- Our whole purpose is to find a culture of leadership
and accountability.
The very first moment we stepped on campus,
those guys bought in to what we were doing here
in this locker room.
- Ben's a 4th year senior and Noah's a 5th year senior,
so they both know exactly what it's going to take
to go out there and win.
We're relying on them for their word is very helpful.
I can always lean on a senior,
that's the great thing about having those two.
They're two different attitudes and personalities too,
so if I have a certain problem with this,
or a certain problem with that,
on the course or off the course,
I can lean on them for that.
- [Golf Member] Ben's taken a little more of a vocal
leadership role this year,
which is valuable.
You need somebody like that on a team.
Noah is a pretty good classy example of somebody
that stays really quiet,
he's not really out there,
but he leads by example.
How he carries himself when we travel to tournaments,
he just leads by example and sets a good
one for everybody to follow.
- It's priceless for us.
To have 2 seniors that have been out there,
that have been through the routine,
it adds a sense of comfort.
You can feel that with the rest of the guys as well.
These guys can face a tough challenge.
They can point that out in the practice round
because they've been there.
They know where to hit an extra chip from.
They know where to hit an extra tee shot from.
I think it's priceless to have that experience
out there for the rest of the guys.
- [Golf Member] We're ziplining today.
It's 8 a.m. in Hawaii.
It's a little rainy,
but hopefully that will hold off and we can get it going.
- Welcome gents.
My name's Shant.
This is Miguel,
we'll be your guides today.
Where are you guys from?
- Mississippi.
(Upbeat music)
- Wooooooo!
- Aloha.
- 1200 feet so a quarter mile of zipline.
Racing side by side.
Fastest person wins.
- I think I'm going to win.
He has a little bit of weight on me,
but I think I got the better technique.
- I mean it's my race to lose.
I think everyone knows that.
If I just stick to my game plan,
I'll come out victorious,
so I'm pretty happy about that.
- 3, 2, 1, go.
- The 3 winners are right here.
- Obviously.
- Me and Chen's race was definitely the best.
- Had fun ziplining today,
but ultimately we're not here to zipline,
we're here to play golf.
I'll see you guys out on the course.
- Got that right.
(Hawaiian music)
- You know the Warrior Princeville Makai Invitational
in Kauai, Hawaii.
What we think is cool about it is just the location,
the destination.
We want to travel and play the best golf courses and
get to different parts of the country.
- I've never been to Hawaii before so that was something
really really cool for me.
To go out and play golf pretty much on a rock
was pretty out there.
You have that ocean right next to you and
then you're looking up in the mountains a couple
of miles away,
so that was really neat.
- To make that your office for 4 days,
we all have to pinch ourselves a little bit.
A great event,
a lot of very good teams there,
and nationally ranked teams.
It's kind of the best of both worlds.
- [Narrator] With a record of 48 and 2,
Ole Miss had high expectations entering the tournament.
But if the Rebs wanted gold again,
they would have to play the course as well as
the competition.
- I think a lot of it comes down to the wind.
Being prepared for any shot.
You can play it one day where you win from the Northeast
and then you play it with the complete opposite wind,
which it can absolutely happen and you see it happen,
it's a totally different golf course.
- It's down wind,
but as you know with being down wind,
it's also beating that hole down.
It's coming down wind a good bit.
Gotta get it in the air.
- I think it's just more the conditions,
whether it's wind or rain.
I think that's a lot of it because it changes.
You're out there on this island,
so storms will blow in and blow out real fast.
- All 3 days we had wind and a little bit of rain
to contend with.
The island's a little weird the way the
rain will come and go for 5 minutes.
You just kind of have to be prepared.
- You're about to get hosed on with rain.
- Come on.
It looks like it's just pouring on the driving range.
- You gotta be prepared with an umbrella,
rain gear,
because it may become a downpour for 3 minutes
and the sun shines out for the rest of the day,
or the wind may blow 40-50 miles per hour,
with rain and wind.
You just never know.
- [Golf Member] A challenge it faces
was it was always windy.
Some of the elevation makes it a little more difficult.
Putting all that together is just a recipe
that if you don't handle it well,
you can definitely fall off the wrong side.
Pun intended.
- There's a lot of visually intimidating tee shots.
That's pretty difficult,
especially when you add elevation to that.
All of the sudden you have to make one swing
based on all of this information you're processing.
That's kind of Hawaii for me.
- [Narrator] Ole Miss would breeze to a round 1 lead,
with a team score of 11 under par.
- That's one thing we've done well as a group this year is
we've gotten off to good starts.
It's pretty hard when you dig yourself a hole.
- It's really important to get off to a strong start.
If we would've had a really bad first day,
then you're kind of behind the 8 ball.
You're playing catch up.
It was really good for us to get off to the start we did
because that way you get your confidence going.
- It's definitely,
especially with all the preparation we put in,
it is important to get off on the right foot
and kind of get your momentum going in the right way.
- That a boy.
Good one, nice birdie there.
- I'm pretty sure everyone on our team started
well so you can kinda feed off your teammates
with that.
- Just a ball striker's paradise.
- Keep it going and then once we got off to such a
good start,
got the momentum,
we just kept the pedal down and it was a lot easier
than having to fight back from behind.
- [Braden] It's nice to set the mindset for the tournament
that you're the players to beat.
Never having to come from behind.
You're leading from day 1 and trying to
increase the lead instead of trying to catch up.
- [Team Member] Long day on the golf course today.
We got some guys over there climbing trees
and what not,
over there scuba diving.
Me and Noah are taking this time to relax.
- We had a good day out on the course today.
It was like a 7 hour round,
so a pretty long day,
but we played well,
so now just enjoying the oceans of Hawaii.
- Aloha.
(upbeat music)
(Hawaiian music)
- That's it for the beach.
We'll see you guys tomorrow on the course.
Hottie tottie, go Rebs.
- [Coach Malloy] Guys excellent job yesterday.
A good round as a team.
You kind of walk away going that was easy, right?
I didn't face a lot of adversity.
You faced a lot of it.
Everything's calculated out here.
I'm great with you taking risks.
Let's make sure it's a calculated risk.
By a calculated risk,
that the percentages are in your favor.
Even if taking that risk goes wrong,
going for a par 5 on 2 and it doesn't work out,
hit in the water,
whatever it may be,
okay fine.
Surrender the outcome.
We've talked about that before too.
You will play great over these next few days,
I know that you will.
You may not get off to a great start today.
You may get off to an unbelievable start today.
Who cares.
Relax, have fun.
Have supreme confidence.
(Upbeat music)
- [Narrator] In round 2,
the team would look to peak not only in confidence,
but also in performance.
- You know golf is all confidence.
Golf is built on confidence.
If you have that,
there's a lot of things that you can do poorly
and still get away with.
- You can't control how your teammates are playing,
good or bad.
If you just go out there and do your job,
get some momentum,
that kind of carries over to your teammates.
When the coach is in a good mood,
he's playing good, he's playing good.
You just go from there,
you can kind of feed off of each other once you're
playing well.
- So you're more into the wind.
- Nice!
- Having the correct attitude going into the next stage,
staying present,
not looking towards the result,
but focusing on the process,
really focuses on the strong round,
the strong day.
So if you keep doing that day after day,
eventually you're going to find the result.
- I made one put over 3 feet today and 5 under.
- Keep it going.
- We're obviously playing very good golf at that point.
If you have that lead,
let's continue to do that.
A lot of times what you find is a group of confident
guys that have played aggressive,
which we love our guys to play aggressive.
It's tough for them to switch that mindset.
Maybe you take less of a risk here or there,
but overall I think let's keep it going.
It's fun to watch good golf,
and they did a good job of that.
- Sit, sit, sit.
- Good job, bud.
- [Coach Malloy] We got off to a good start and then really
struggled through the middle part of our round.
It was nice to see them really regroup.
Not only regroup,
but they played great coming down the stretch.
I think we had the low round of the day again,
so that's 2 days in a row,
which is awesome to see.
(Drumming)
- We just got some dinner and we're going to
watch some native Hawaiian dances.
Now all that's left is final round.
Go Rebs.
- [Narrator] Coming into the final round of
the tournament,
Ole Miss looked to capitalize on two straight days
atop the leaderboard.
In order to leave Hawaii with a win,
they would rely on the steady leadership of
head coach Chris Malloy.
- How far are you thinking about hitting that?
- What was the actual distance?
- It's 213 10,
but you've got the wind doing the same thing it was
yesterday,
it's left right helping a little bit.
- The wind's doing the same thing it was yesterday,
it's doing this.
- We're right here.
The 10's here.
I'm going on this line.
That's a 20 yard, 15 yard carry.
That's 198.
And that's without even helping.
- Absolutely.
You thought your way through it.
- I think they really give us a good mental
state of mind right when we get to that tournament setting.
Every tournament we have gone to,
I don't think Coach Mal;oy hasn't told us
we are the best team on the field.
- I came in with Coach Malloy,
he's been my coach the whole time.
I think the way the culture that he's changed,
we all feel like we're winners
and that we will win every time we get on the golf course.
- When you have somebody tell you that you are one of
the best in the country and the best on the field
and we should win,
we're probably going to win.
- Good swing, man.
Remember that doesn't mean it's going to be
easy the entire round.
- [Narrator] The beautiful view off the hole at the
Queen's Bath was matched only by that of the
leaderboard,
which showed the Rebels winning the event
by a total of 22 strokes.
Sophomore Braden Thornberry claiming the individual
title.
- He's had a really special semester,
we're fortunate to have him for a couple more years
and build this program around.
He's a good kid.
He does all the things right.
He does every little thing right.
- For him to do what he's done the last 2 tournaments,
and this whole semester,
but especially the last 2 tournaments,
has been awesome.
- [Braden] Once I'm leading,
I kind of tell myself that to this point no one has
played better golf,
so there's no reason they should coming in.
I just try to keep the foot on the pedal and
you don't have to take on unnecessary risks,
but kind of pick your spots when you're feeling good
and just make the short puts.
It's hard for people to catch you if you just
play it the right way.
- Well you don't get much more consistent than this.
277, 276, and 278.
33 under, Ole Miss.
Congratulations.
- [Team Member] I think you really saw it
coming together in Hawaii.
You have to walk out there and know you're the best.
You're not scared of anybody.
You're not looking to play second,
you're out there to win and that's your job,
so let's just go do it.
- We are the people to beat.
Come catch us.
Individually too it gives you confidence.
We're the guys they're trying to beat
and we're going to have to mess up for them to do so.
- We have that mindset,
the attitude of optimism and moving forward.
Keep pushing, keep pushing.
Try to do something special that nobody's done.
- Just a new normal here.
We feel like we've got a good group of guys that
we're traveling in and out with every week.
We've got guys at home that can play.
That just shows you we've got a good group
in this locker room right now.
The depth is getting there and recruiting's helping.
Good playing's helping,
everything.
We feel like this program's on the rise.
We've got the wheels spinning in the right direction.
I'll say that.
- As a program,
I think it's pretty easy to see what our
trajectory is.
With where we were a year ago,
2 years ago,
to where we are now,
we're excited about the future of this program.
- We had a long day on the course and now we
get to relax.
- Would you relax, Tay?
- You got some seaweed on you.
- Oh god.
- You hurt yourself.
- I hope you have a good trip and we'll get
you there shortly.
- That was terrible, wasn't it?