TEMPE, Ariz. -- Fiery teammates Scott Johnson and Chris Hanell were playing a practice round before the 1996 NCAA men's golf tournament at the Honors Course in Ooltewah, Tennessee. They nearly came to blows.
"Hanell was being Hanell and decided to go up on the green while I hit my second shot," Johnson recalled, laughing. "So I hit a second shot that I think landed about 10 feet from him and that's when the explosion came."
While others watched the shouting match in wonder, one bystander asked Sun Devils coach Randy Lein why he didn't step in and stop it. Teammates already knew the answer.
"We had a lot of good egos on that team and everybody had their own way of doing things but they all wanted to win," said Joey Snyder, the lone senior and the steadying force on the team. "Randy's greatest attribute was reading guys and knowing when to step in or when to let them go.
"He understood that some of that fight and passion is good for golf and he understood the make-up of our team. That wasn't the first time something like that happened -- it happened a lot -- but it didn't stop us from winning. It might have even helped."
Passion, precision and depth were the calling cards of that unique team, which produced just one medalist all year and two honorable mention All-Americans, yet won six tournaments including the Pac-10 Championship and the NCAA title 20 years ago this spring.
The Sun Devils knew they were good that season, but after the loss of Todd Demsey to graduation, Lein wasn't presuming anything.
"The year before (in the NCAAs) at Ohio State, on paper we had a better team with accomplished seniors," said Lein, noting that Demsey had won the NCAA individual title as a sophomore in 1993. "We had three of five guys returning so you just don't know. It was pretty unusual because you normally have one stud that pulls the rest of the guys together, but that year we were a by-committee team. We just had five guys who played well together."
Aside from Snyder, Johnson and Hanell, the 1995-96 Devils featured the always loquacious Pat Perez and freshman Darren Angel, who Johnson said dressed like a biker but won the team over when he took medalist honors at the Ping Preview in Cornelius, Oregon in September.
"Darren was a soft-spoken kid who just went out and played good golf," Lein said. "I think he had to be soft-spoken as a freshman on that team."
Johnson remembers Oklahoma State senior Alan Bratton (now the Cowboys coach) coming to play in the Phoenix Open while Johnson caddied for him. Bratton attended an ASU practice and was stunned by the Sun Devils' behavior.
"Bratton said 'I don't know how you guys deal with each other.' If one of our guys is having a bad day we go help him,'" Johnson said. "The way we operated was a little different. If a guy shot a poor round there was no consoling him, there was only rubbing it in and Perez was famous for that. If one of our guys was having a bad day we were rubbing it in.
"We wanted to beat each other more than our opponents and I think that's why we weren't afraid of anybody."
The Sun Devils had a swagger by the time they reached Tennessee for the NCAAs. They were conference champs, and they had also won the Thunderbird Invitational in Tempe, the Southwestern Invitational in Los Angeles, the Jerry Pate Invitational in Birmingham, Alabama and the Ping Preview.
They were ranked No. 1 in the nation, but the spotlight was focused elsewhere. Stanford sophomore Tiger Woods had taken the nation by storm and was planning to turn pro after the NCAAs.
"In those days, the NCAA Tournament would normally get a few hundred fans, mostly parents, but for Tiger there were 3,000 to 4,000 people watching his group," Lein said.
The Sun Devils were annoyed.
"There were all these people watching him putt out on the green and after seeing this all day, Chris finally lost it and screamed 'get off the fairway!'" Lein said.
Before the tournament started, Johnson and Snyder both remember hearing The Fugee's version of Roberta Flack's "Killing me Softly" and thinking it was an omen.
"Golfers are stupid-stitious," Snyder said. "We heard that song on the way over for the first round and we just kept playing it over and over again. For some reason, it just got us in the right frame of mind."
ASU had a comfortable lead over UNLV with three holes to play when Lein instructed his troops to play it safe at the par-3, 16th over water. Johnson ignored his advice and cleared the water "by about two inches" with a 6-iron. The others followed Lein's advice and went long with 5-irons.
"We made three or four pars and a bogey by being ultra conservative and then UNLV drains a long putt and chips in on another to pick up strokes on us," Lein said laughing. "Me and my big mouth."
ASU held onto its narrow lead and as Snyder, Johnson, Hanell and Perez watched Angel coming up the 18th fairway, they were ready to burst.
Woods won the tournament at 3-under, and Arizona's Rory Sabbatini was second at 1 over, but Angel tied for third with UNLV's Mike Ruiz at 3 over and ASU edged UNLV by three strokes for the team title at plus-34 (1,186).
"We will never live up to Phil Mickelson's legacy," Snyder said. "He put ASU on the map and he is still the man everyone looks to when they think about ASU golf, but it was really satisfying to follow up the national championship he won in 1990 with one of our own, and it was really satisfying to do it for Randy. To have all five guys contribute made it especially cool."
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