April 12, 2013
Live Results
SAN DIEGO - In its final tune-up of the regular season, the San Diego State men's golf team will travel north this weekend for the 67th annual Western Intercollegiate, April 13-14, in Santa Cruz, Calif. The two-day, 54-hole tournament is scheduled to get underway Saturday morning at 8:15 a.m. PT on the par-70, 6,615-yard Pasatiempo Golf Course, which was designed by Alister MacKenzie, architect of Augusta National.
The highly competitive field includes six squads ranked in the latest Golfstat top-50 index, featuring No. 1 California, No. 3 Washington, No. 5 UCLA, No. 7 Stanford, No. 11 USC and No. 42 Oregon. The 55th-ranked Aztecs will also be joined by Arizona State, Denver, Fresno State, Hawai'i, host San Jose State, UC Irvine and UTEP.
A live scoring link for both days will be available courtesy of Golfstat on goaztecs.com.
For the six-man tournament, SDSU head coach Ryan Donovan will utilize the starting lineup of Tom Berry (New Haw, Surrey, England), Austin Kaiser (Atascadero, Calif.), Xander Schauffele (San Diego, Calif.), Robert Gojuangco (San Diego, Calif.), Riccardo Michelini (Carpi, Italy) and James Holley (Chatsworth, Calif.).
Berry leads the Aztecs with a 72.00 stroke average this season, which ranks second in the Mountain West, while Schauffele (9th - (72.43) and Michelini (19th - (73.217) also find themselves amongst the conference top 20 through 10 tournaments this year.
The Aztecs are making their third consecutive appearance at the Western Intercollegiate, but just their fourth since 2001. Last year, SDSU finished seventh in the team standings at 71-over 1,121, edging San Jose State (+72) and UC Irvine (+73), which followed in the eighth and ninth spots, respectively. Berry, the lone Aztec returning starter from last season's tournament, tied for 50th individually with a combined 17-over 227.
The Western Intercollegiate was conceived in 1947 and is the oldest running men's college golf tournament west of the Mississippi River. Lars Johansson is the most recent SDSU individual champion at the event, coming away with medalist honors in 2001 after besting Jason Higton of Pacific on the first hole of a sudden death playoff. In addition, Kris Moe emerged victorious at the Western Intercollegiate in 1983, while Ron O'Connor accomplished the feat in 1960, leading the Aztecs to their only team title in the history of the tournament.
Other notable winners of the Western Intercollegiate include Ken Venturi (1951, 1953), Johnny Miller (1968), Howard Twitty (1972), Peter Jacobsen (1974), Mark O'Meara (1978), Bobby Clampett (1980), Duffy Waldorf (1984), Arron Oberholser (1996), Joel Kribel (1997, 1999) and Jason Allred (2000).
Following this weekend's event, SDSU will have nearly three weeks to prepare for the 2013 Mountain West championships, scheduled for May 3-5 in Tucson, Ariz.