Grant Renegar, a 2014 Parklane Academy graduate, signed to play golf at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Fla., a Division I school in the Atlantic Sun Conference, after two years at Meridian Community College.
“I was talking to several different coaches,” Renegar said. “I’ve been in contact with probably over 20 to 25 coaches. I kind of narrowed it down to about three or four, and they offered a really good scholarship in a really good location for golf.
“It’s just golf heaven down there in Florida. It’s about two hours south of Tampa. It’s a really good community. It’s got really nice weather, really nice facilities and everything.”
Renegar struggled as a freshman at MCC, and had only one Top 5 finish the whole year.
“My sophomore year was kind of my breakout year, I guess you could say,” he said.
Renegar had eight Top 5 finishes in 13 tournaments, MCC was ranked No. 1 at one time and finished eighth in the national championship at Swan Lake Resort in Plymouth, Ind., this past year.
He won at the Lake Caroline Golf Club in Madison with scores of 67, 72 and 70 in a 54-hole tournament and at Briarwood Country Club in Meridian with scores of 69 and 72 in a 36-hole tournament.
“In high school when we’d go to a tournament, you can kind of tell there’s three or four players there that really have a good shot at winning,” Renegar said. “Then once I got to college everybody’s that good. It was a little bit of an adjustment there because the competition was much better than I had anticipated.”
He played in all 28 tournaments during his two years at MCC, finished second team All-American, was an academic All-American, first team All-State and nominated for the Jack Nicklaus Player of the Year Award. MCC finished ranked No. 4 in the nation, while individually he was ninth in the nation.
Renegar, whose best score ever was a 64 on two different occasions at Quail Hollow Golf Course in McComb, said he had to work a lot harder as a sophomore at MCC. However, he had seen a lot of the golf courses he played on the past two years prior to his time in college.
“That’s something that kind of comes with experience,” he said. “There’s a little bit more versatility in your game. The golf course — we had to travel a little bit, but we mostly stayed in the southeast area.”
In December of his freshman year at MCC, Renegar switched instructors and started taking lessons from two individuals at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point. V.J. Trolio was his new swing coach and Tim Yelverton was his new short game coach.
Renegar said he saw better results after working with Trolio and Division I schools started recruiting him his sophomore year.
As a junior for the Pioneers in 2013, he won one tournament at the Cleveland Country Club in Cleveland, Miss., by two shots with a 68 in the first round and a 70 in the second round. He started playing golf for Parklane as a freshman under head coach Randy Martin. Beck Troutman took over as head coach during his high school career.
He spent summers during high school working as a course attendant at Quail Hollow, and also worked numerous golf tournaments at Fernwood Country Club. He represented Mississippi in the American Junior Golf Tour in Pinehurst, N.C., during the summer of 2013, and was the Mississippi Junior Golf Association Player of the Week in December 2013. He had one win and seven top five finishes while competing on the MJGA tour. He was a member of two Mississippi junior cup teams that won the River Cup against Louisiana. He was a part of the Southern States Junior Cup matches against Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas, and did not lose a single match.
Looking ahead to the next two seasons at Florida Gulf Coast University, Renegar said he hopes to win the Atlantic Sun Conference both of his years and to advance to the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship. He added he has his sights set on getting as many wins as possible and becoming one of the elite amateurs of the world.
“They’re a little bit better than the middle of the pack right now, so I guess a reasonable goal would be just to get that level at the top of the Division I, which you can definitely do,” he said.
Renegar is a civil engineering major and has not decided whether or not he will turn pro.
“I really just have to see how I play my junior and senior years and then decide whether to keep on pursuing golf or whether I am just going to go ahead and start my career,” he said.
Renegar is the son of Chris Renegar of Edwards and Dan and Lisa Lewman of Summit.
