March 22, 2018
SAN DIEGO ââ'¬" The San Diego State men's golf team returns to the fairways this weekend when it competes in the inaugural Bighorn Invitational, March 23-24, at Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, Calif. The two-day, 54-hole tournament, hosted by Kansas State, will be contested on the renowned par-72, 7,000-yard Canyons Course.
The first two rounds are slated to commence on Friday with a shotgun start at 8 a.m. PDT, while the final 18 holes are pegged for a Saturday completion with tee times beginning as early as 8 a.m. A live scoring link courtesy of Golfstat will be available for both days on GoAztecs.com.
Along with No. 49 SDSU, the highly competitive field features seven additional squads ranked in the Golfstat top 100, including No. 5 Illinois, No. 32 Brigham Young, No. 35 Kansas, No. 48 Colorado, No. 73 Notre Dame, No. 79 Mississippi State and No. 97 South Alabama. The Aztecs will battle two other Big Ten squads in Indiana and Nebraska, while the host K-State and Washington State round out the list of participating schools.
Ryan Donovan will employ the starting lineup of seniors PJ Samiere (Kailua, Hawaii) and Blake Abercrombie (Rocklin, Calif.), sophomore Trevor Norby (Carlsbad, Calif.) and freshmen Puwit Anupansuebsai (Nakhon Phanom, Thailand) and Steve Sugimoto (San Diego, Calif.)
The Aztecs are coming off a sixth-place standing at their lone home tournament of the season at the Lamkin San Diego Classic, March 12-13, at San Diego Country Club. Samiere was SDSU's top finisher in the South Bay, tying for sixth with a 6-under 210, while Abercrombie landed in the 27th position at 2-over 218.
Samiere leads the Aztecs with a 71.35 scoring average so far this year, followed by Abercrombie (72.31) and Sugimoto (73.40). Samiere and Abercrombie are the lone SDSU players to appear in all nine events for the Scarlet and Black this season, while Sugimoto and Anupansuebsai (74.30) will each be making their fourth varsity starts of the spring schedule.
Entering the weekend, Samiere finds himself at No. 81 in the latest Golfstat individual rankings and occupies the 82nd position in the Golfweek/Sagarin index.
Bighorn Golf Club's stunning terrain and history-making tournament play have made the Tom Fazio-designed Canyons Course one of golf's most legendary 18-hole layouts.
Greats of the game, such as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Payne Stewart, Tiger Woods, Lee Trevino, Annika Sorenstam and Se-ri Pak have thrilled viewers worldwide along the dramatic fairways in high-level events, such as The Skins Game, the U.S. Senior Match Play Challenge, Battle at Bighorn and the LPGA's Samsung World Championships.
Following the Bighorn Invitational, San Diego State will have one final tune-up before the Mountain West Championships, when it travels to northern California for the historic Western Intercollegiate, April 7-8, at Pasatiempo Golf Course in Santa Cruz.