SAN DIEGO – The San Diego State men's golf team resumes its fall schedule this weekend when it competes in the 66th annual William H. Tucker Intercollegiate, Sept. 27-28, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The first two rounds of the 54-hole tournament will be contested on Friday, while the final 18 holes are slated for a Saturday completion on the par-72, 7,555-yard UNM Championship Course. A live scoring link courtesy of Golfstat will be available for all three rounds on GoAztecs.com, with a shotgun start scheduled for both Friday (7:30 a.m. MT/6:30 a.m. PT) and Saturday (8 a.m. MT/7 a.m. PT).
In addition to host New Mexico, the Aztecs will get an early look at two other Mountain West adversaries in UNLV and Wyoming while battling Pac-12 members Arizona, Colorado and Utah. SDSU will also lock horns with West Coast neighbor Loyola Marymount, while Brigham Young, Coastal Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Kansas, North Texas, New Mexico State and UTEP round out the 15-team field.
Aztec head coach Ryan Donovan will accompany seven golfers to the Duke City, including the starting lineup of Christian Banke (Danville, Calif.), Callum Bruce (Banff, Scotland), Leo Oyo (Tokyo, Japan), Zihao Jin (Beijing, China) and Steve Sugimoto (San Diego, Calif.), while Ambrose Abbracciamento (Newtown, Pa.) and Amadeo Figus (Rome, Italy) will make the journey as individual competitors.
SDSU opened its fall docket two weeks ago with a sixth-place standing at the rain-shortened Husky Invitational in Bremerton, Washington, where it carded a 36-hole total of 3-under 573 to finish one shot behind Oregon (-4) for fifth place and four strokes in back of fourth-place Oregon State (-7) on the Olympic Course at Gold Mountain Golf Club.
Banke was the Aztecs' No. 2 golfer at the aforementioned event, tying for 19th at even-par 144, followed by Jin (T-24th, +1) Oyo (T-32nd, +2) and Bruce (T-50th, +5). Meanwhile, Sugimoto received his first starting assignment of the season this week after landing in the top 20 as an unattached golfer at the Olympic College Invitational on Sept. 16 in Port Orchard, Washington.
The Scarlet and Black will be competing in the Tucker Intercollegiate for the 12th time in the last 13 years while making its 17th appearance overall. Last season, SDSU placed sixth out of 17 squads with a 3-over 867, finishing 19 strokes behind team champion Brigham Young. Sugimoto and Banke are the lone Aztec holdovers from that installment of the tournament. Sugimoto tied for 32nd at 3-over 219, while Banke was three shots behind in a tie for 43rd at 6-over 222.
BYU's Peter Kuest and UNLV's Harry Hall were co-medalists at the Tucker Intercollegiate last year after each carded an 11-under 205. With the graduation of Hall, however, Kuest remains the field's top returning individual. Also back in the mix are New Mexico's Sam Choi (T-4th, -5), BYU's Carson Lundell (T-6th, -4) and Rhett Rasmussen (T-9th, -2), as well as UNLV's Jack Trent (T-9th, -2), Colorado's Daniel O'Loughlin (T-9th, -2) and Wyoming's Kirby Coe-Kirkham (T-13th, E).
The Tucker Intercollegiate, which was named in honor of former University of New Mexico groundskeeper William H. Tucker, is the second-oldest men's college tournament in the country behind only the New England Intercollegiate. Previous individual competitors include Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Tommy Armour III, Tim Herron, Duffy Waldorf, Notah Begay and Matt Kuchar.
San Diego State has twice won the Tucker Intercollegiate in recent years, hoisting trophies in 2010 and 2016 to go with second-place efforts in 2007 and 2009. In 2016, the Aztecs posted a winning total of 1-under 863 to outlast Colorado State (+9) and BYU (+14), bolstered by PJ Samiere's (-2) fourth-place individual finish. Meanwhile in 2010, the Scarlet and Black rallied from a seven-stroke deficit during the final round to edge North Texas by one stroke.
Following this weekend's event, the Aztecs will have a nine-day hiatus before making their annual trip to the Bay Area for the Alister MacKenzie Invitational, Oct. 7-8, at the historic Meadow Club in Fairfax, California.
M. Golf Readies for William H. Tucker Intercollegiate
