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GREENSBORO —

Go ahead and call it a rivalry.

Two top-five NCAA Division III golf programs are in the Gate City.

And the schools, Guilford College on West Friendly Avenue and Greensboro College on West Market Street, are separated by 5.4 miles.

Both will compete in the NCAA Division III golf championship in Hershey, Pa., starting Tuesday. Guilford is ranked fourth nationally and Greensboro is fifth in the most recent Golf World/Nike coaches poll.

Typically golf is not a trash-talking sport. Sure, there have been player rivalries such as Tom Watson-Jack Nicklaus or Nicklaus-Arnold Palmer. But those are tame compared to frothing-at-the-mouth college rivalries between Duke and Carolina. Or State and Carolina.

But we've got a rivalry. Greensboro College's best golfer, Brock Elder, in a recent online video, wore a white baseball cap reading "BEAT Guilford" in green letters during a chat with the college sports information director.

"We've heard some trash-talking," Elder said, joking in a two-minute video posted March 9 to YouTube.

"We like to have a bit of fun," said Guilford's Peter Latimer, the nation's top-ranked Division III golfer. "It makes a bit of difference."

Both teams have one more shot at each other as part of the 37-team field playing for the championship.

"There's definitely something between the schools in all sports," said Dirk Fennie, the coach at Greensboro College, who was an assistant coach at Guilford last year.

The two colleges play each other in every varsity sport.

"It's healthy," said Korky Kemp, interim coach of the Guilford golf team. "There's some kind of competitive fire."

Guilford hasn't lost in football to Greensboro since 2004. The game comes each season in a food bank benefit called the Gate City Soup Bowl. Greensboro's men's lacrosse team, meanwhile, has won each game against Guilford since 2005.

"In any sport that we play against Guilford, there's that extra cross-town rivalry," said Bob Lowe, Greensboro's sports information director. He said that more "BEAT Guilford" hats are available in the campus bookstore, too.

Lowe agreed that golf is the prime sport for high-level play. And both have a history with the Division III championship.

l Since 2000, three of the Division III golf titles have come to the city through the schools.

l In 2000, Greensboro took the honor for team play, while the Pride's Kevin O'Connell won the individual title.

l The 2002 national title went to Guilford. Greensboro finished second.

l Guilford also won in 2005.

This season, Greensboro is the only one of the two teams that has beaten Methodist, the top-ranked team going into the championship.

But Guilford finished ahead of Greensboro in four of the seven tournaments in which they played this season.

Neither past nor recent history is on any player's mind as the teams head up to a week of golf in Pennsylvania. The teams will practice today and Monday then begin the 72-hole tournament Tuesday.

"The past couple of weeks, I've been watching Fred Couples videos and trying to remember what I've done in the past," Elder said between practice putts at Starmount Forest Country Club. "I feel like I'm ready."

Elder, a Vandalia Christian alum, is ranked 10th nationally.

Latimer, a senior, is ready to get back on the course after taking time for school work.

"I've been working pretty hard to graduate," he said before a recent round at the Cardinal Golf & Country Club. "I had a lot to deal with. You feel a little pressure."

The two have been paired on the course several times this year, they said, and aren't ruling out the chance they could be paired again.

"He's very patient," Latimer said of Elder. "If he gets to a bad start, he hangs in there and just waits and waits."

Elder said Latimer is a bit more fiery.

"He's been known to accidentally hit someone with a club," Elder said with a grin.

Both say the competitive nature exists only on the links. Off the course, both teams sometimes even socialize.

Elder said he was part of a group of players from each team that recently went to the Quail Hollow Championship in Charlotte to watch the pros.

"We talk and we're having fun," Elder said.

But when it's time to play?

"I don't want to lose to them and they don't want to lose to us," Elder said.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt @news-record.com