My Story: Men's Golf's Tom Bevington

Growing up in the UK, playing college golf in the US seemed like a distant fantasy to anyone who had heard of my goal. For the first 14 years of my life I had my heart set on being a professional cricketer anyway (cricket is like a much better version of baseball, no offense). At 14, I was burnt out from playing cricket and didn't want to play anymore. I turned to golf to put my competitive energy somewhere. I don't think I was capable of breaking 90 on a regular basis at this point. I decided against all logic, that I wanted to play professional golf when I grew up. For me, the only way to do that was to play college golf in the US, so I set my heart on it.

Outside of school, I put all of my focus on getting better at golf. Fast forward a couple of years and I had gotten a lot better, but still not good enough in the eyes of almost every DI coach I spoke to. A guy who played on the team at WKU with Coach Hatchett back in the 80s recommended I reach out to him. Having never heard of Western Kentucky, several months later I was sitting in Coach Hatchett's office, verbally committing to join his program at WKU. I don't know what he saw in me, but I'll be forever grateful to him for giving me a chance to play. Before I got to WKU, I still hadn't broken par in a competitive round. In one of the final events I played before arriving at WKU, I had a 3-foot putt to shoot -1 but watched it lip out instead.

Four years later I sit here as someone who couldn't be prouder to be a student-athlete at a school I'd never heard of not long before. I have been fortunate to play for two great coaches in Coach Hatchett and Coach Metts, and to have built more great relationships than I thought was possible. I'm incredibly grateful to have been given a fifth year to play for Coach Metts and will be working as hard as I can to help us win a conference championship, something we came close to my junior year, the last time we had the chance to play for one. That year I started to reach my potential, and led by BT, Stu and Linus, we made huge strides as a team. Despite leading for the majority of the event, we fell heartbreakingly short at the C-USA Championship.

During my senior year, my game fell off a little, and it took awhile for the team to make up for the absences of BT and Stu. Right as we started to make big improvements this spring, like every other sport, our season got cancelled. Having been fortunate enough to get a chance to play a second senior year, nothing would make me happier than to graduate next May, leaving our program with a C-USA Championship ring.

Whatever happens, I'll be doing it in honor of the man who gave me the chance to play in the first place, Coach Hatchett.

Tom Bevington Signature

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