Wade Thompson has sights set on winning MVC Championships
04/26/2015 | 12:00:00 | DawgTracker
By Tom Weber
SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. - When Southern Illinois men's golfer Wade Thompson tees it up tomorrow at the Missouri Valley Conference Championships in Sunrise Beach, Mo., he won't intimidate the competition with his size and strength.
The wiry, 5-foot-8 senior from Mt. Carmel, Ill. isn't a big hitter off the tee, but he makes up for it in many other ways. He has laser-like precision to keep the ball in the fairway, and then attacks the course where he sees opportunities to score.
"I guess I've just kept this edge about me," Thompson said. "When I was in high school, I got the nickname Bulldog. At that time I was even smaller. I was only about 5-foot-6 and 105 pounds. My dad always told me, `Anyone can play golf -- no matter how tall you are, no matter how short you are, no matter how big you are or fit you are.'"
After transferring to SIU from Murray State two years ago, Thompson has steadily improved his game. He leads the team with a 73.7 stroke average and has three top-10 finishes this season, including a third-place showing at the UT-Martin Skyhawk Fall Classic. He's ranked 14th overall among MVC golfers and has one more objective left to accomplish in his Saluki career.
"My goal this year was to win a tournament individually," he explained. "This is my last opportunity and that's what I'm going to try to do when I go out there. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, but I would like to finish my golf career giving my all."
Thompson is comfortable with the role of underdog. As a kid, he started playing golf with his friends just for fun, and didn't have a golf coach until he reached high school. By his sophomore year, he won sectionals.
"I was beating all these kids and I started to believe I could actually make a college career out of it," he said.
Then he started working with a new teacher his junior year and struggled with too many swing thoughts. He found his groove again as a senior, but by then, his college options were limited.
"I actually got a scholarship to Murray State through Andrew Mitchell, who is on our team now," Thompson said. "He got one there and told them I was good enough to play there."
Thompson played in 16 tournaments for the Racers in two years and put up respectable numbers, but he wasn't pleased with his performance and even considered giving up golf.
"It was a combination of things," he explained. "I didn't feel like I was getting any better and kept getting more frustrated. College golf wasn't as glamorous as I thought it would be. I thought we would play at the most awesome golf courses and just have the greatest time ever. It's just straight business and you're out there grinding as hard as you can, you have to keep up with school. It's a lot harder than I thought it was going to be."
Becoming a Saluki breathed new life into his college career. He has a new coach this year in Justin Fetcho and is playing his best golf.
"Coach Fetcho has done a really nice job this year," Thompson said. "He shows us how to manage a golf course, how to own those shots. I think I've hit it 80 less times than I did at this point last year, which is pretty remarkable to do in one year.
"I've really improved my putting and chipping," he continued. "I was choosing the wrong clubs most of the time. We kept our stat sheets and I kept looking at them and kept seeing how many shots I was giving up around the greens and I didn't realize it. I went from having 32 putts a round to where I'm getting close to 29 now."
The last two weekends, SIU has competed in prestigious tournaments at Ohio State and Purdue against some of the best teams in the country.
"When we first got to Ohio State's tournament, I was extremely nervous on the first tee just because we haven't seen a field like that yet," Thompson said. "By the end of the week, we realized we could play with these people. There's no team in the Missouri Valley that's played two tougher tournaments than we have on two tougher golf courses. We aren't scared. We feel like we can go out there and win."
Thompson has a 3.7 GPA in accounting and plans to join the business world after he graduates. He'll continue to play golf for personal enjoyment and will also have more time for other hobbies such as drawing. He has pictures he's drawn of celebrities like Jack Nicholson hanging at his apartment, and is currently working on a portrait of Bob Marley.
"I have a talent to where I can see something and draw it to look exactly like how you see it," he said. "I just use color pencils. I can't paint at all."
He'll always be grateful for the opportunity the game of golf has given him.
"It's definitely built character. It's taught me a lot of patience. Being out there for 10 hours -- thinking over every shot -- by the time you're done you are just so mentally drained. As a freshman I just got so frustrated and could not deal with it. Now, I've learned how to cope with it."
Players Mentioned
