Asheboro’s Bray Hopes to Build on Fantastic Fall 
By STEVE HUFFMAN 

Dustin Bray said he looks at the accomplishments of Ty Tryon more with pride than envy.

Bray, 20, is an Asheboro native and a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he enters the spring as the 16th ranked player in Division I collegiate golf according to the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index.

Tryon, meanwhile, is a 17-year-old Florida resident who made headlines last fall by qualifying for the PGA Tour despite having not yet graduated from high school.

Bray said he and Tryon are fast buddies, having competed against one another in a number of amateur tournaments. He said Tryon roomed with him at UNC last spring when the two tried unsuccessfully to play in the Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic through a Monday qualifier at Stoney Creek Golf Club.

"Ty is a good friend of mine," Bray says. "He made his decision to turn pro and I made my decision to attend college. When the time comes, I want to join him on the pro tour. It's a dream of mine, but I feel it's a realistic dream."

No one at UNC is complaining that Bray has temporarily put on hold his dreams of a pro golf career.

Last fall, Bray finished in the top 10 in four of the five tournaments in which the Tar Heels competed, finishing in the top five in three of the final four events. Bray won one of those four tournaments ­– The Prestige at Desert Willow in Palm Springs, Calif.

In December, Bray won medalist honors after firing rounds of 70-71-65 for an eight-under-par 206 total during medal play at the prestigious Dixie Amateur in Pompano Beach, Fla.

He's the main hope that followers of UNC golf have for a breakout season by the Tar Heels this spring in an extremely competitive Atlantic Coast Conference.

"Dustin is about three shots a round better than anyone else we've got," says Tar Heel coach John Inman. "He's a great competitor. He just needs to work on his consistency, that's the main thing right now."

Inman said Bray's work ethic is unmatched. He said it's not unusual for him to find Bray on the Tar Heel's home turf – Finley Golf Course – long after everyone else has gone home. Inman said he'll return to the course after dark to find the lights on, with Bray out there alone working on his chipping or putting.

"He's not afraid to put the time in," Inman says of Bray. "He wants to play on the PGA Tour. He wants to be successful."

Bray said some people seem surprised when he tells them the hours he spends working on his game. He said some seem to think the sport is merely something that comes natural to him.

The truth, Bray said, is that he spends countless hours on his game – working and reworking every aspect of his swing.

"I start my season right now," Bray says of the practice he began back in January. "I'll work at it hours a day every day until mid-November. Then I'll take a little time off. I feel I owe it to my family."

Bray, the son of Randy and Carol Bray, said he started playing golf when his father discovered him swinging a club one day in the garage of the family's home in Asheboro. Bray was a whopping four years old at the time.

"He took me to a course and I've been playing ever since," Bray says. "I think I've loved the game from the very beginning."

Though his brother, Adam, is a senior point guard on the Asheboro High School basketball team, and Dustin at one time showed a fair amount of promise at the sport, he said he eventually gave up the game to concentrate on golf.

"I knew that if I had a future in athletics, it was in golf," Bray says.

Rich Smith, the golf coach at Asheboro High, said he realized early on that Dustin had the potential to be one of the best golfers he'd known. It wasn't so much Bray's natural ability, Smith said, as it was his commitment to the game.

"Dustin is going to outwork everyone he plays," Smith says. "When everyone else has gone home, he's still going to be out there practicing. He's also a great kid. He and I are still good friends."

Bray said he dreams of leading the Tar Heels to a berth in the NCAA Tournament this spring, though he admitted the team has its work ahead of it. Only 35 teams qualify for tournament play.

"As a team, we didn't play well this past fall," Bray says. "But we've still got the potential."

Meanwhile, Bray said he has no second thoughts about his decision to attend UNC. He said he was looking for a school that mixed academics and athletics, and says he feels UNC was the perfect place for him.

"The longer I'm here, the more I enjoy it," he says. "At first, I only wanted to play golf. Then it dawned on me the importance of academics, too."

Bray says he doesn't have a time frame for when he'd like to take his own shot at a berth on the PGA Tour, but adds that for now he's planning to finish his undergraduate degree at UNC. He says he'd love to play on the Walker Cup team, as well as earn All-America honors at UNC.

For now, he's just working to make every round his best.

"I don't want to call myself a professional until I'm ready to play against the best in the world," Bray says. "I think that with another two-and-a-half years of hard work, I'll be there."