Conqu'ring Heroes 201 - Zach Barlow Transcript
4/30/2026 10:13:00 AM | MGoBlue Podcasts
Jon Jansen • 00:00
The men's golf team here at Michigan heads to North Plains, Oregon to take on the rest of the Big Ten in the Big Ten Championships that's coming up this weekend. And to give us an idea where this team is, a review of the season. But also heading into the Big Ten Championships, head coach of the men's golf team, Zach Barlow joins me next on Conqu'ring Heroes.
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Jeff Laurence [voiceover actor] • 00:26
Welcome to your One Stop podcast for all things Michigan athletics. Updates on every team on campus and interviews with players and coaches are all on the way. This is Conqu'ring Heroes. Here's your host, John Jansen.
Jon Jansen • 00:41
Well, the men's golf team is headed out to Oregon for the Big Tens. Specifically, it's in North Plains, Oregon, for the Big Ten Championships. Coach Barlow is joining me now. Coach, thanks for your time. It's a big trip out to the Big Tens, heading all the way from Ann Arbor to Oregon. Does it seem strange to. To be going out to Oregon for the Big Ten Championships?
Zach Barlow • 01:04
It does, it does. You know, being in the Big Ten, you know, I guess the last eleven years coaching and then playing in the Big Ten first year for anything like this. So. And especially when you hear about it, you know, you're just. You worry about weather, and we're kind of always worried about that in the Big Ten, but everything looks great. We're excited to get out there. We've actually, that's one of the spots we've never really been to play anywhere, for that matter. So we've been west and east, obviously, but never northwest.
Jon Jansen • 01:35
We'll talk about your golfers here in just a little bit, but I want to get a little bit more insight into Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, what you're going to be playing, what do you know about it, and how unique is it that you're playing a course for a Big Ten championship that you've never played before?
Zach Barlow • 01:49
Yeah, it's a little different. It'll be the first time for that, even in my coaching career. I feel like, you know, we kind of rotated back and forth on some courses that I'd been familiar with either playing or coaching in the past. So this is definitely something new for the coaching staff and for the players. But from everything we've heard about it and, you know, I know before we jumped on here, we talked about the weather. You know, the, the weather forecast is great. And I know Pumpkin Ridge, you know, if you look back, it's where Tiger won his third USA in a row, I believe. And it, it seems like it's kind of meant to be played firm and fast and you know, this time of the year they do get a lot of rain, but the weather forecast is great. So we're expecting firm and fast conditions, which is something that, you know, we, we are very excited about that part of it, but honestly, we're ready for anything and, and we're prepared for whatever.
Zach Barlow • 02:47
We, you know, we had Ohio State and Indiana the last two weeks and we kind of saw all seasons of weather there, so we'll, we'll be ready to roll no matter what the weather ends up being.
Jon Jansen • 03:00
How do you prepare your guys? I know you'll probably get a practice round or two, but how do you prepare your guys for a new coach? The mental aspect of, of just being able to take on one after another, hole after hole.
Zach Barlow • 03:12
Yeah. So, I mean, that's, that's a big part of it. And really these last couple weeks with having such a young team, we've really just kind of focused in at least the coaching staff is just focusing on growth and just getting better at the things that, you know, kind of the fundamentals of golf, so to speak, and, you know, just really kind of hitting those things home and not trying to be somebody we're not and understanding that mistakes are going to happen and, you know, you just can't follow a mistake with another mistake. But we're getting out there on, we're going an extra day early, so we're getting out Tuesday evening and we're going to play a different course out there on Wednesday. And then Thursday is the first official practice round, so we're just going to take it all in and, you know, kind of see what the course has to offer. And, and you know, I, with the weather forecast, I kind of expect scores to be maybe a little bit better than they have in the past at the Big Ten Championship.
Zach Barlow • 04:12
I know. You know, in the past, even par has always been a great team score. I think potentially you could see, you know, maybe it going up a little bit better than that this year, but really, as far as practice goes and just some of the mental stuff, all we focused on, even the last couple months, is short game lag putting, you know, just getting the, getting the ones up and down that you're supposed to get up and down ten out of ten times. And you know, I'm not, I'm not so much worried about, you know, know, the flop shot over the bunker to the, to the tucked pen. I'm more worried about right when you're in front of the green, twenty yard lag. Like I, I want to be getting those up and down every time.
Jon Jansen • 04:53
So it's interesting. I. And before we. I want to talk about your team, because you mentioned it's such a young team, led by freshmen and sophomores. Basically, you only got a couple of juniors and no seniors. But as you mentally prepare for it and. And behave, it's a big one for all of these guys. How are you preparing them and what do you expect out of them in the next step for what you've seen during the regular season for the Big Tens?
Zach Barlow • 05:21
Yeah, we've talked about it, really, all spring, and something that. Something else that we've struggled with is playing hard holes well and knowing, you know, it just seems like we tend to make bogey on hard holes at a higher percentage than, you know, probably the top, the thirty or forty teams do in the country. And that just, you know, can't happen from a mental standpoint. And we've been great when. When a course is. Provides a little more birdie opportunities, you know, like, especially if you look at the start of the year, I mean, we were forty five under or forty two under, twenty five under, seventeen under, we tend to do that really well. But we. What we've struggled with is. Is getting momentum from pars. And, you know, pars are really good in general, and pars are especially good in college golf. And so that's really. That's been.
Zach Barlow • 06:16
The main focus, is just, you know, kind of accepting that it is, you know, a harder hole in the course and, you know, just not, I guess, succumbing to that, like, oh, this is a hard hole, so bogey is okay. And, you know, when you. When, when five guys do that, think bogey's okay, you're kind of in trouble because you're counting for those five bogeys. But we've been better at it of late. We gotta. We gotta clean up the finishes a little bit. We've had some pretty. We've played okay in the spring, not. Not quite as good as we played in the fall, which we always tend to do here at Michigan for some reason or another. But it's just. It's just those small things that, you know, that end up popping up. You know, we had two tournaments where. We've had great tournaments, going for forty five of the fifty four holes and then the last nine holes, it just seems, whether it be conditions or just that nine being the harder nine, that we haven't been able to really let our talents show.
Jon Jansen • 07:18
So I know you got multiple golfers on the course at one time, and this is a question I Don't know the answer to how much are you able to coach them up in the middle of a round and how much are. If that's the case, how much do you do that and how much do you lay off? Because there's a lot in their minds going on.
Zach Barlow • 07:37
Yeah, that's, that's the million dollar question in college golf coaching really, is when to kind of step in and implement yourself and when to just kind of let them flow and know that they're in a good headspace and keep them going on that track. You know, especially being men. You know, I feel like we all think that everything's under control at twenty four seven, you know, so. And Hoff and I too, the last three weeks. Um, you know, we've, we've tried some different stuff coaching wise as well. We usually try to, like, one of us tries to be there on par threes and another one on the, on par fives. It seems to be where there's more decision making and where you can, you know, I kind of call it get, you know, you have the answers to the test, so to speak. You've seen, you know, after a couple of groups, we usually try to get there a group or two before our guys get there and see a couple shots on the hole and walk up there and kind of see what's, you know, where's an easy spot to get it up and down.
Zach Barlow • 08:35
You know, try to pick a, help them establish a good target for where we're trying to go. And, you know, it's, it's kind of
Zach Barlow • 08:49
it's a little bit of a guessing game. I mean, there'll be times where, you know, you're with a player and he's a little bit out of sorts and you want to walk with him for three or four holes and just try to get him back on track with the decision making part of golf. But the majority of the time, we, we spend a lot of times on par threes and par fives just because, like I said, you know, you, you can, you can intake a lot of, of information and, you know, almost have the answers to the test on where they want to be.
Jon Jansen • 09:18
So let's talk a little bit more about your team. I mentioned it already. You referenced it. It's a very young team who has stood up as leaders on your team with the void of no seniors.
Zach Barlow • 09:29
Yeah, that's a, it's a great question. I think we've struggled with that to a point. Now, obviously you can't, you know, when you're talking about Michigan Golf, you, you've got to talk about Dean and rj. They've, you know, since I, I think in two years. This is a crazy stat, but in two years they're separated by three shots. They, they've both played every tournament and that's probably twenty different tournaments and they're, they're three shots apart, which is wild. Now they've got their completely different ways, but those two, you know, they smashed records last year. Rj's on pace again to be the best sophomore ever at the University of Michigan. Scoring wise, he's had an incredibly consistent year. He's, he's been knocking on the door for the win a couple of different times, but I think of the shoot, he's got like seven top twenties and four top tens this year and ten events.
Zach Barlow • 10:28
Dean obviously had the big win at the Dilapa in the fall and you know, he's, he struggled a little bit from there. If you, if you look at his results just with expectations and kind of being able to manage those once you do get that one, because it's, you know, once you do, it's, it's kind of like the expectation goes up like you should every week. And unfortunately in golf that's just not the way it works. But those two definitely have, you know, they're kind of the two headed sophomore monster. And then, you know, really, Jordan Hwang is, is, he's had a very quiet but very underrated freshman year. He's also on pace to, to break the freshman scoring record at Michigan. And he, you know, last week was a big time week for him. Just some things that we had been, you know, slowly working on. You don't want to come in with a freshman and reinvent the wheel and try to tell them that everything they've been doing in the past is, you know, is wrong or not the correct way.
Zach Barlow • 11:30
And it's not what we do here at Michigan. It's all about development and, and just slow changes and, and he's really taken, he works so hard. You know, if he's not the hardest worker on the team, he's, he's definitely one of the top three and he gets after it. So it was good for him last week to get some momentum and really see those things kind of come to fruition. So, you know, I, it wouldn't surprise me at all for him to come in and contend as well. And then, you know, obviously we got Nilay Naik who's, is from Oregon. He's, he played this course maybe three, four years ago, something like that. So he's got a little bit of experience, but he was a D three transfer, has come in and really been even better than advertised. You know, just like Jordan, he would be, you know, he would be one of the three hardest workers on the team. And just, he's so attention to, detail oriented.
Zach Barlow • 12:23
He gets the most out of his practices. He's very hard worker and he wants it and this is, it's important to him. And as a coach, it's really all you can ask for is just guys to come in and learn and really just kind of want to see how good they can be. And he's embodied that and been a great addition to our team. So, you know, I can't say enough good things about him. He dominated qualifying in the fall, which was good as a, as a transfer coming in and, and kind of establishing himself on a team. But yeah, so it really, honestly, with this team, it could be anybody. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if, if, if any of them were, were low this week. And then Jason's gonna, Jason Gordon's gonna fill up the five spot. He's been, he's been pretty solid this fall, especially in tough conditions. He's played some really good rounds for us and really important rounds.
Zach Barlow • 13:15
And you know, he's, he's kind of, he'd struggled with this game in the past. He is a. His third year, but he's kind of understanding the game a little bit better. He's a very, I would, I would call him very golf mature and understands that, you know, you, you want to stay in an offensive mindset and get yourself in positions where you can be offensive in golf instead of defensive. So, you know, another. Again, it wouldn't surprise me if he goes out there and plays really well too. I mean, he's, you know, he's kind of, he's played one event on the team and then he played last week in Indiana, which was an absolute crazy conditions and, and played solid, especially the last round. And he had a great last round in Myrtle Beach, which was big for us as well. So he's up for the challenge. He's got a lot of experience under his belt and you know, I wouldn't surprise me if he goes out there and plays well too.
Jon Jansen • 14:10
With your experience in the Big Ten as a player, now as a coach, your seven years here at Michigan, are there things that you predict for, hey, freshmen are going to have these bumps, sophomores and, and, But I mean, every golfer is different. And I got to imagine that maybe golf is the most unique in regards to where guys are when they enter college, but also years two, three and four.
Zach Barlow • 14:33
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point too. I explain that to all recruits and you know, you come in and you know, kind of here as a freshman and you want to leave up here as a senior. And the quickest way to do it is a straight line. But unfortunately in golf that line is, it can go many different ways with many things thrown at you with school and social life and being away from home and especially for freshmen. And I've learned a lot this year coaching these freshmen. Just things that, that Hoff and I would do differently and maybe almost, you know, I think we've done a good job of it so far with Mackey and, and Shrop coming in next year as two highly touted freshmen is just getting, getting face to face with them or on the phone with them and just explaining some things that are going to come at them right away. And things tend to move really fast in the fall and I, I think Jordan would even agree with that as well.
Zach Barlow • 15:29
It's just, it's tough to come in because, you know, in golf when, when you get here, you've got seven days and we're at a tournament, so there's no real time to get ready. And that's where it's different from every other sport. You know, we're not, yeah, we're not really establishing, you know, different plays or, you know, different positional stuff. And you kind of got what you got, that, that freshman fall. And you know, that's why it's important to come in your game ready, confident kids. And you know, that's, that's kind of, again, that's what we've preached this spring is just keep learning, keep growing. And you know, we've shown we can compete with the best, but we've also know that our, you know, in my opinion, our average golf has to get better. You know, everybody's A game is great, but at the end of the day, you know, champions are made when your B and C game on a day cannot put you out of the tournament and gives you a chance the next day to, you know, kind of get going and, and still be in contention.
Jon Jansen • 16:25
And, and I was going to ask you that because it's a three day tournament and when, when you have somebody that hits well on day one, maybe not day two, like how do you work your way through a tournament with guys that are different levels, different levels of confidence, having different things going on? I mean, it's very unique position that you and your Coaching staff are in.
Zach Barlow • 16:47
Yeah. You know, the one thing we preach to him a lot is golf maturity. I think we have some mature guys, but the golf matur. And I would say emotional maturity, being so young is tough at times because you go out one day and shoot, you know, sixty eight, and everything's going your way. You make a couple of putts here and there, you've got momentum, and then the very next day, you know, you're there, and maybe it's a fifteen, twenty mile per hour wind. Club feels a little bit different in your hand. Body feels a little bit different. So we're constantly on them about emotional. And golf maturity is just like, hey, the, the biggest thing in golf is you have to understand what game you have that day. And once you understand that and you're mature enough to say, hey, you know what? Maybe I don't quite have my A game today. Maybe it's B, B minus game. You make decisions based on that.
Zach Barlow • 17:36
And, you know, instead of maybe going at some aggressive pins, you know, maybe it's. It's, hey, let's get this one in the middle of the green. It doesn't really set up that great for me. You know, I've been, you know, missing here or there a little bit the first four or five holes, so you're, You're. I know they say not to evaluate, but you, you have to have an understanding of how things are going that day and that it's different than the day before just because you play good or bad. And like I said, it works both ways, too. If somebody goes out and shoots seventy eight, it's just like, hey, you know, tomorrow, let's see what you're made of type deal. And that's, that's the beauty of. Of it for me, especially being eighteen. Eighteen, eighteen, and having three days from a coaching aspect, I like these tournaments because it's part of life, bouncing back and bouncing back on one end or see if you can follow up a low one with another low one on the.
Zach Barlow • 18:24
On the next end, because it's all learning. You know, you're kind of understanding your body better. And, you know, that's when you. That's when you have a good team. When you got guys that really understand that and can make decisions based on how you're. How things are feeling that day and how things are going, that's when you got something.
Jon Jansen • 18:42
Well, coach, safe travels out to Oregon. Best of luck when you're out there and. And hopefully we'll get a chance to catch up soon.
Zach Barlow • 18:48
Yeah, thank you very much. And thanks for having me.
Jon Jansen • 18:57
Well, thanks to Coach Barlow and his entire team. I know it's exciting to think that they're going out there to to Oregon Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club this coming weekend, Friday through Sunday in North Plains, Oregon. It's a big trip, lot riding on it. A very young team as you heard coach talk about. So not only is exciting for this year, it's exciting for the future. For everything that's going on in and around Michigan Athletics. Make sure you keep it locked in here on Conqu'ring Heroes.
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Jeff Laurence [voiceover actor] • 19:27
Thanks for listening to Conqu'ring Heroes with John Jansen. Conqu'ring Heroes is part of our Michigan Athletics Podcast network, M GO Blue Podcasts. The preceding has been a Learfield presentation of the Michigan Sports Network.
