When Bryon and Laura Hotzler went to watch the University of Alabama golf team capture the 2013 NCAA Championship in Atlanta, the players treated the Reynolds Lake Oconee residents like they were part of the Crimson Tide family. That’s because for one week each season, the Hotzlers are their family – as in the team’s host family during the annual Linger Longer Invitational.
And whatever the Hotzlers are feeding those guys – Bryon’s oven-roasted chicken wings are a favorite – obviously worked. Alabama has won three Linger Longer Invitational team titles (2011, 2012, 2013), while Cory Whitsett captured three individual titles each of those years, as well.
“We’ll always have the tournament on our schedule, as long as they will keep having us,” Alabama coach Jay Seawell said. “Bryon and Laura have adopted us. We love them, the way they open their house to us and are so good to us. All our guys want to go back to Reynolds Lake Oconee because of them.”
The Hotzlers, who live across the cove from the 16th green at Great Waters, looking forward to seeing the Crimson Tide players, particularly seniors the family has known since their freshman year.
“It has been great to get to know them,” Byron Hotzler said, defining what host families throughout Reynolds Lake Oconee experience. “We don’t have kids; they are our kids. We fuss over them. They are total gentlemen and a lot of fun. We enjoy it more than they do.”
That might be a stretch, since the week that these nationally ranked golf teams spend at Reynolds Lake Oconee is unlike anything else they do all year. Normally, as they travel from event to event, the routine is to stay in one hotel after another – and room service never has home-made chicken wings.
“Here we get to stay in a home all together, rather than being spread out in a hotel,” said Moseley, whose team made it all the way to the NCAA Championship finals in 2013. “This is more of a bonding and cultural experience. It breaks the monotony of normal travel.”
Off the golf course, the players can go boating or fishing on Lake Oconee, ride a wave runner, or find some other leisure activity.
“The competition is important to us … the challenge to play against the best,” Sewell said. “The guys realize we want to be the best we can be. But I encourage my guys to get them away from the grind, to get out there on the lake, get their mind off of golf for a little while. Some like to fish, some just like to go out on a boat.”
If Lake Oconee doesn’t do the trick, home cooking will.
“Food is the way into the hearts and minds of college boys,” Bryon Hotzler said. “It’s fun to cook for them. And if their parents are here for the tournament, we have them all over to the house for dinner together. We have been able to meet some great people that way.”
Around the dinner table – at least at the Hostler house – golf isn’t a major topic. Neither Bryon nor Laura Hotzler play golf, or know much about it. “Other than, ‘How did you do today?” the conversation isn’t about golf,” Bryon said. “We talk about school, families, things like that.”
Occasionally they talk about careers outside of golf, since in reality most of the players in the Linger Longer Invitational will not become golf tour stars. Bradley said one of his former Mercer players was able to get a job interview through a relationship he made with a host family at Reynolds Lake Oconee.
“The combination of the people and the atmosphere is wonderful,” Seawell said. “The competition is great, but the place is so relaxing. It really does make you want to linger longer.”
“We created something unique,” former Mercer coach Jason Payne said, “with the mentality of the tournament to take it easy, play some golf and just be together. That is very appealing.”
It certainly is appealing to the Alabama Crimson Tide … almost as appealing as Bryon Hostler’s chicken wings.
