2017 OVC Men's Golf Championship
The 2017 OVC Men's Golf Championship was held April 24-26 at The Shoals on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. It marked the fourth-straight season and fifth overall time the Championship has been held on the course (the men's event was also held there in 2009). The event will also be played there next year (2018).
Jacksonville State overcame an eight-shot deficit entering the final round to top Eastern Kentucky by a single shot. It marked the sixth overall OVC Men's Golf Championship for the Gamecocks (2004, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2017).
The Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at The Shoals is home to two 18-hole championship courses and lies between the Wheeler and Wilson dams on the Tennessee River. Wheeler Dam is named in honor of General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler - the only Confederate General to attain the same rank later in the United States Army.
The Fighting Joe course at The Shoals was the first Trail course to break 8,000 yards. Travel + Leisure Golf named Fighting Joe one of the top new courses in 2004. The second course, the Schoolmaster (named for President Woodrow Wilson who was responsible for getting Wilson Dam built and was also known as "The Schoolmaster" of politics), opened in the Summer of 2005.
The OVC Championship was contested on the Fighting Joe course.