Underdog Drexel golf team still in search of first CAA championship, but could find it this weekend

When Ben Feld took over the Drexel golf program in 2016, just a few years removed from his own playing days, and at 25 one of, if not the youngest Division I head coach in the country, the expectations from university administration were rather dull for his tastes.

Drexel is, after all, an urban school in the Northeast, and University City doesn’t exactly scream golf oasis. All but two of Drexel’s competitors in the Coastal Athletic Association are to its south. Feld is, he thinks, the conference’s only part-time coach.

So how high could expectations realistically be from the school’s administration? Finish in the top half of the conference, put a decent product out there, and move along.

“That doesn’t align with my ethos or what I want the ethos of the program to be,” Feld said. “We’re here to try to do this, as unlikely as it may be.”

The “this” Feld is referring to is to win a CAA championship, something the school’s golf team has never done. This weekend, the Dragons head to Beaufort, S.C., a small section of Port Royal Island, just north of Hilton Head, to try to do just that.

How they got there tells a bit of a story about the plucky underdog nature of the program Feld has led for eight years.

First, there was a train ride from 30th Street Station to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Why? Philadelphia International has fewer flights that way, and it’s cheaper to fly out of Baltimore anyway.

From there, Feld, assistant coach AJ DiGennaro, and six golfers traveled to Savannah, Ga., and then drove an hour to Beaufort. The Dragons get a few days of practice on Dataw Island’s Bermuda grass before tees go in the ground for tournament play on Sunday.

It makes for a long day, but the money Drexel saves on a trip like that allows for some of Feld’s selling points when he’s recruiting. Drexel goes to Puerto Rico every year for a tournament and frequently travels to places like California, Florida, and the Carolinas for events. The school has relied on donor support to help fund some of those expenses and also for upgrades to the team’s practice area inside the Daskalakis Athletic Center.

And while Drexel has seen a lot of success in Feld’s eight years — the program’s best five finishes at the CAA championship have come during his tenure — it’s still an uphill climb when compared to the likes of Charleston and North Carolina-Wilmington, two of the teams Drexel will try to knock off this weekend.

“If we’re looking at the reality of it,” Feld said, “they start each year on first base and we’re at home plate, and what are we going to do to go get them? We have to run faster, and we haven’t been able to run quite fast enough. …

“But we’ve run pretty damn fast.”

» READ MORE: As an excelling an amateur, Drexel golf coach Ben Feld serves literal inspiration to his Dragons

Feld’s full-time job is as a financial planner at Bash Capital. He and wife Jessica, also a Drexel alum, have a 1-year-old daughter. Plenty goes on in his life that doesn’t involve Drexel golf.

How does it all work?

Perhaps the best answer comes in the caddie version of Feld.

“He’s always such a calming, great presence. He always knew the right things to say,” said Chris Crawford, who went from Feld’s teammate to playing for Feld during his time at Drexel. Feld has caddied for Crawford in several events, including during two of three U.S. Open tournaments Crawford qualified for — in 2017 at Erin Hills (near Milwaukee) and in 2021 at Torrey Pines (outside San Diego).

“I’ve played some great golf with Ben on the bag, and it’s not a coincidence,” said Crawford, who is in Rio de Janeiro this week playing at the PGA Tour Americas’ Brazil Open.

DiGennaro, who officiated at Feld’s wedding, said one of Feld’s biggest strengths is dissecting a golf course during a practice round. Feld, Crawford said, excels at picking shots and strategizing around a course.

“Ben had all the characteristics to be a great college coach,” Crawford said.

“Golf isn’t about how good your good shots are; it’s how good your bad shots are,” DiGennaro said. “We want to be the most prepared team when we tee it up that first day.”

As far as Feld’s leadership style, DiGennaro pointed to Feld’s age and skill. Feld is young enough at 33 to connect with many of his players and still plays golf at a high level, including competing in the U.S. Amateur two years ago.

Tafadzwa Nyamukondiwa first met Feld on a Zoom call a few years ago while attending junior college in western Texas. A native of Zimbabwe, he had been in the United States for only two years but said he vibed well with Feld and DiGennaro.

The program, Nyamukondiwa said, is built on the principles of family, and the golf team has been a home away from home for a student who has been home only once in five years since moving to the U.S. from southern Africa.

“They don’t put pressure on you to perform,” Nyamukondiwa said of Feld and DiGennaro. “You have to do what you got to do. You have to be willing to want it. You have to work for it. They reinforce that.”

» READ MORE: Drexel golfer’s journey: From Zimbabwe to the PGA Works Championship

Feld will be the first to acknowledge that Drexel was expected to win or come close to winning in its four fall events to start the 2023-24 season. But, as Nyamukondiwa said, “You still have to go and swing.”

Drexel went 4-for-4 in the fall, winning events at the 1912 Club and Sunnybrook, plus two more in North Carolina. It was the first time in school history that Drexel won four straight events.

The spring portion of the schedule has been more up-and-down. The Dragons placed 10th out of 16 teams at the Palmas del Mar Collegiate in Puerto Rico, where nationally ranked Arkansas took first. Then came second-place finishes at events in Georgia and South Carolina before Drexel won the inaugural Dragon Match Play Invitational last weekend.

The goal of spring golf, Feld said, was to be peaking and playing their best golf heading into conference tournament weekend and figuring out “who are the five guys that give us the best chance to go down and give us the best chance to accomplish this task that has never been done before?”

Senior Drue Nicholas, an all-conference selection last season, leads the way, but, Feld said, it’s not about who’s at the top. Five golfers compete in all three rounds, and you take the best four scores each day. The key to winning tournaments like the CAA championship is having a few of the guys at the bottom of the lineup “bob and weave,” Feld explained, and shoot a score lower than expected.

That fits the program just fine.

After all, Feld’s not necessarily looking for the best golfers by raw numbers when he’s recruiting. He’s looking for trajectories and late bloomers. A player who averaged 72 all four years in high school may be a good golfer, but Feld may be more interested in the player who improved from 79 to 73 over the course of a few years.

“What does next year look like? What does four years from now look like? We don’t know, and that’s the exciting part,” Feld said. “You’re not going to hit on all of them, but if you can match that with guys with the right personality and a chip on their shoulder where they want to be part of the underdog story because that’s how they envision themselves, then you really have a motivating story.”

All of that is part of the recruiting pitch. Forget the weather, and the part-time coach, and the school being in a city.

“We’re going to succeed despite all of these limitations, as opposed to all of these limitations are part of the reason why we might not succeed,” Feld said.

“It isn’t for everybody,” DiGennaro said. “But when people get locked in and have a chip on their shoulder, it can definitely be a motivating factor.”

In a game like golf, sometimes that’s all you need.