Gerrod Chadwell recaps A&M's first-place finish at Carmel Cup

Key notes from Gerrod Chadwell interview

• We’re off to a good start with this season. It was pretty impressive in the sense that you don’t know this early. You saw the qualifying with how they showed up. We had three new faces in the week. You don’t know how they will respond to team golf, to us, or to the magnitude of competing at Pebble Beach. I was really impressed with how we started, and even more with how we finished.
   
• What this showed was our competitive depth. There are still some young ladies at home who are going to play a lot of golf for us. I think it's amazing. I am trying to do a better job at celebrating that, but it is hard to do. But also, we went 1-0 last week. Now, it is 0-0 this week. We've got to do the best job we can do this week, of turning around and doing well this next week in this tournament. We just have to go back. No one is resting on their laurels. We just have to keep competing because this fall season happens pretty quickly.
   
• Cayetana Fernández García-Poggio has been so close to the fire. She struggled to meet her expectations and ranking her freshman year. But there has been a lot of growth in that. She is such a gamer. She shot a 67 or 65 at the regional. She finished fifth in her qualifying. Then, she showed up and competed, and she didn’t even have her best that week either. It is just exciting to see the growth she has had on the golf course, and we will keep pushing her to grow off the course.
   
• Next year, we will start with a different tournament. It will be a tournament like Pebble Beach, but we will do something in the DFW metroplex. It’s just expensive. We pay $50,000 to play at Pebble. We raise to go play, but it only covers rooms and the golf. It doesn’t cover food. Fin Ewing III covers the food, beverage and entertainment. We had Oz the Mentalist as entertainment. It was insane. He did a 45-to-1-hour bit, and I have no idea how he did that.
   
• We play in the Folds of Honor Tournament this weekend. We leave on Friday. What I learned last year is that the Folds of Honor raises scholarships for dependents of fallen, wounded soldiers of the military. A&M had over 700 recipients. The next school was like 500 away from that. We are still learning about what we can do. The money goes to the scholarship. I am excited to be a part of this event and see what we can do for a great cause.