WINSTON-SALEM – Just think how good Nick Kurtz will be if he ever gets a normal offseason.

Two offseasons with Wake Forest’s baseball team haven’t afforded him that luxury and based on his freshman season plus this year’s opener — a 9-3 win over Youngstown State on Friday — he’s plenty good without normalcy.

Kurtz had two of Wake’s three homers, including a grand slam in the second inning, to pace Wake’s offense at David F. Couch Ballpark.

“I’ve been waiting for this day since I got surgery two days after the season ended last year,” Kurtz said. “How we ended last year, and then 7-8 months before the first game was tough, obviously. But I mean, I felt pre-game jitters on Monday and it just kept getting worse and worse.”

The sophomore first baseman underwent surgery on his right shoulder. Kurtz suffered a torn labrum in it in the fall before last season and kept reinjuring it last season — all the while hitting .338, smashing 15 homers and starting 53 games.

He didn’t start taking live at-bats until January. Kurtz walked in his first at-bat Friday, and his grand slam helped blow open Wake’s cruise-control win in the opener.

“Nick Kurtz is a really good player,” coach Tom Walter said. “It helps when you have Brock Wilken hitting behind you, you see more pitches. That’s a pretty good 3-4 combination.”

Not everything was rosy when it came to Wake’s opener, but the worry over Teddy McGraw is minimal.

“Teddy McGraw just had a little tenderness and fatigue this week,” Walter said of his junior righty starter, adding that if it was an ACC weekend, he’d have pitched. “Since it’s early in the year, didn’t want to take any chances, so we’ll bump him back to next week.”

Seth Keener started in light of McGraw’s situation and the junior righty matched a career high with five innings, set a career high with eight strikeouts and didn’t allow a run. He allowed one hit, one walk and hit two batters.

Wake’s starters against Illinois will be the Deacons’ two other weekend starters; Rhett Lowder on Saturday and Josh Hartle in the second game of Sunday’s doubleheader. Michael Massey, a transfer from Tulane, will start Sunday’s first game.

“I couldn’t ask for more from Seth Keener,” Walter said. “Originally we were going to go with three from Keener and three with Reed (Mascolo), but Seth was throwing the ball so well we decided to go 5-2.”

By the time Mascolo entered in the 6th, the Deacons were up a touchdown and a 2-point conversion.

Wake Forest got a run in the first inning on Jake Reinisch’s bases-loaded sac fly that looked, briefly, like it’d be a grand slam.

That came in the next inning.

Adam Cecere led off the second with Wake’s first homer of the season. The next four batters reached base, with Pierce Bennett drawing a bases-loaded walk. That prompted a mound visit ahead of Kurtz’s at-bat.

Kurtz jumped on the first pitch and launched it into the high winds that were blowing out to right field — not that this one needed the wind to leave the ballpark.

“I knew he was struggling to get around the zone, I kind of knew a fastball was coming,” Kurtz said. “He was just trying to get in the zone.”

That put the Deacons ahead 7-0 and with how well Keener pitched, that was pretty much it for the competitive nature of this game.

Kurtz tacked on his second homer in the fourth, and Bennett drove in a run in the with a single in the seventh.

Youngstown State (0-2), which lost 9-6 to Illinois earlier Friday, scored all three of its runs in the 8th. Those were aided by a catcher’s interference call, plus two hit batters.

Cole Roland, a transfer from Dartmouth, entered to record a strikeout that ended the threat and then struck out the side in the 9th.