UW Men's Golf Off To Santa Cruz For Western Intercollegiate
April 15, 2011
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- The Husky men's golf team will have one final chance to gauge the barometer and see where they stack up against some of the top college golf squads when they compete this weekend in the talent-laden 65th annual Western Intercollegiate at Santa Cruz, California's Pasatiempo Golf Course.
It is the UW's final tune up before the Pac-10 Championships at the end of the month. The Huskies have won the conference tournament in each of the past two seasons.
Washington finished a disappointing 14th its last time out at the Insperity Augusta State Invitational in early April. Husky head coach Matt Thurmond feels his team cannot play any worse than they did in Georgia. The team quickly put the tournament behind them when they experienced a side-benefit of the trip with a visit to Augusta National Golf Course.
"It was our worse tournament ever," said Thurmond half-jokingly. "It was washed away though because we got to go to the Masters' Monday practice round. It was really inspiring for our guys to go out there and walk those fairways and watch some of the best players in the world and how they prepare, how they do it.
"It was real inspiring for the guys and it filtered into the week," continued Thurmond. "They had a great week of practice and worked really hard. I think they realized how much energy the pros work on their short game, so they put a lot of effort into that this week."
The Western Intercollegiate starts on Saturday and runs through Sunday. The 15 teams - 92 total competitors - will play 36 holes on Saturday, beginning at 8:15 a.m. and finish with 18 on Sunday at the par 70, 6,615-yard course.
Each team will consist of six individual players, with the best five scores from each round counting towards the team total.
Washington's lineup will include sophomore sensations Chris Williams and Charlie Hughes, senior Tze Huang Choo, junior Kevin Spooner and freshmen Trevor Simsby and Cory McElyea. Pasatiempo is the home golf course for McElyea, who attended Harbor HS in Santa Cruz.
Also joining the 30th-ranked Huskies (Golfstat.com rankings) are Arizona State (#21), Augusta State (#7), California (#16), Colorado, Denver, Hawai'i, New Mexico State, Oregon (#26), San Diego State (#4), host San Jose State, USC (#23), Stanford (#20), UC Irvine and UCLA (#3).
Several of the nation's top-ranked individuals will also be competing, including Williams (#25) and Hughes (#53). UCLA's Patrick Cantlay is currently the No. 1 ranked player in the nation, while Stanford's Andrew Yun is No. 4.
As usual, live scoring can be found on Golfstat.com and recaps will be on GoHuskies.com following each day's action.
