It started in March with a handshake over lunch in Prague between two University students studying abroad. There, LSA seniors Roger Sauerhaft and Kevin Buzard decided between bites that the idea that they had been floating around would become a reality.

They would bring a club golf team to Michigan.

Some 4,400 miles away and four months later in Ann Arbor, incoming freshman John Gordy and sophomore Ryan Alger had the same idea. They began moving forward.

“About a couple weeks into it, we realized that two other kids were doing the exact same thing,” Gordy said. “So we just teamed up with them.”

Now, just three months since its inception, the team has earned a trip to the National Collegiate Club Golf Association Fall Championship at Bryant Park golf course in Greensboro, North Carolina by winning its first two tournaments. Coincidentally, this course was the site of senior varsity golfer Lion Kim’s victory in the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship, which earned him a berth in the Masters.

“At the beginning of the school year, Roger was saying his goal was for us to win a National Championship, and I thought that was kind of far-fetched,” senior Paul Sefcovic, who made the all-tournament team at the second event, said. “But once we won those first two regional tournaments, I was kind of thinking, ‘We’ve actually got something pretty good going here.’ … So I think we’ve definitely got a shot.”

The team won the first regional tournament by six strokes, beating club teams from Wisconsin, Dayton and Miami (Ohio), among others, and later cruised to a 15-stroke victory in the second. The team is currently undefeated in tournament play, despite not even existing long enough to be included on the NCCGA website.

“Because it’s our first year, when we went to the Midwest Regional Tournaments, the other teams were kind of surprised that Michigan was even there, because they’d never heard of our team before,” Gordy said.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the team’s success is its depth. During the summer, Sauerhaft, the team’s president, who is also a member of the Daily’s editorial staff, worked to recruit members to the newly formed club. With help from the other original four, he sent mass e-mails, talked to golfers that he knew, and worked on getting range times and sponsors.

Eventually, the pieces started falling into place.

“Our biggest event was when we were at Festifall, and we brought out a golf bag, and just seeing a golf bag out there, so many people just came up to us,” Buzard said. “We had a lot of kids, a lot of upperclassmen who came up and they just said to us, ‘Finally, Michigan finally got a club golf team.’ ”

As the club was getting off the ground, golf company TourEdge signed as a sponsor, and a local golf facility called Miles of Golf gave the team discounted rates.

“I really commend (Sauerhaft) for the effort and the energy that it’s taken to follow through with it, and obviously they’ve been extremely successful,” said Doug Davis, vice president and co-founder of Miles of Golf.

By the start of the season, the team had enough talent to compete with the best club teams in the region.

“I know personally a lot of the guys on the team that I played with in high school,” Gordy said. “A lot of them were All-Staters in high school and got offers to go play in college, but just for one reason or another wanted to go to the University of Michigan.”

While talented, the club of about 30 members is not limited to scratch golfers.

“We’re really hoping … that someday we can actually work with other clubs, other organizations and also less skilled golfers on our team and really help them in terms of their game and help them fall in love with golf. It’s really to improve your game of golf with a bunch of friends,” said Buzard.

For now, the team is concentrating on making sure that the idea that began in Prague leads to some nice hardware in Greensboro.