ALBUQUERQUE, NM. – The spring installment of the 2016 University of New Mexico’s Men’s Golf program is set to begin on Jan. 29-30 in Tucson, Arizona for the Arizona Intercollegiate.
The Lobos are slated to compete in seven tournaments before the Mountain West Championships open on April 22-24 in Tucson. The team is set to travel to tournaments in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Some team highlights of the Fall 2015 season segment included a record 19 shot victory at the William H. Tucker Invitational and successfully defending the team title for the fourth consecutive year. UNM Head Coach Glenn Millican felt that the fall “showed us (the team) how great we can play with that performance at the Tucker.”
Despite the dominant performance at the Tucker Millican also acknowledged that the team still needed improve, admitting that the team “also had times that we didn’t handle tough situations as well as we need to, we are still a group that is gaining experience.”
Millican concludes confident that the spring will bring about great performances despite the teams youth.
“We can play great golf and we will continue to improve as this group plays more together. The courses we play in the spring are relatively familiar to us and will provide us great opportunities to compete against very good fields at great venues.”
The tournament is hosted by the University of Arizona and will be held at Sewalio Golf Club.
Sewalio Golf Club opened in 2013, and was designed by PGA Tour standout and New Mexico native Notah Begay III. The course is set to play at 7,262 yards with a par of 71.
The 15-team field for the spring opener includes Arizona
BYU, California, Cal State Fullerton, Denver, Iowa State, New Mexico, New Mexico State, Santa Clara, South Dakota State, Southern Illinois, Texas, Utah, UTEP, Washington, and Washington State.
Last season’s team tournament champion was Arizona State with a score of 12-under 840 (286-277-277) par. ASU also laid claim to the individual champion in Max Rottluff, a junior. It was Rottluff’s second individual title of the season; Rottluff was 7-under on par-4 holes and carded the most birdies (15) of the tournament.
The formatting for this years Arizona Intercollegiate is 54-hole stroke play tournament with 36 holes being played on Friday, followed by 18 on Saturday.
A shotgun start will be used with teams teeing off at 8:00am MST on Friday, Jan. 29 and 8:30am MST on Saturday, Jan. 30.
Live scoring for the tournament will be provided through BirdieFire, click here for live tournament scoring.