|
Sept. 13, 2012
SEATTLE -- The Husky men's golf team kicks off the 2012-13 season this week by hosting the Kikkor Golf Husky Invitational and Cornhole Classic. The 54-hole tournament will run Monday, Sept. 17 through Tuesday, Sept. 18 and be held at Gold Mountain Golf Complex in Bremerton, Wash. The team championship will be held on the Olympic Course, while the individual championship will be played on the Cascade Course. Golfers will play 36 holes on Monday and 18 holes on Tuesday. The Olympic Course is a 7,124-yard, par-72 track that has hosted the 2006 U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship, the 2011 U.S. Junior Amateur Championship and the NCAA Men's West Regional twice (2010 and 2008). The Cascade Course is par-71 and will play at 6,707 yards for the individual competitors. Washington won the rain-shortened event last year and Chris Williams was the individual champion. Last time Washington convened on the golf course as a team was June 1 when they lost to Texas in the quarterfinals of NCAA Match Play. The Huskies finished sixth in stroke play to earn its third trip to match play action in three tries. Washington returns all but one player for the five-man squad that competed at Los Angeles' Riviera Club. The Huskies are ranked 5th in the Golfworld preseason coaches poll and are led by a pair of All-Americans: Williams and Cheng-Tsung Pan. Williams enters his senior season as one of the most decorated golfers in UW history. He ended the summer as the No. 1 ranked amateur in the world and winner of the Mark H. McCormack medal, handed out by the R&A to the world' top amateur during the 2011-12 year. Williams (Moscow, Idaho) was also a 2012 PING First Team All-American and first team All-Pac-12 selection. He holds the UW record with six career victories. Later this fall, he will represent the U.S. at the 2012 World Amateur Team Championship. Joining Williams among the world's top amateurs is Husky sophomore Pan. He is currently ranked seventh in the World Amateur Golf Rankings and is coming off a PING Freshman All-America season. Senior Charlie Hughes and junior Trevor Simsby are the other returnees from the Huskies' NCAA squad. The only other returning letterwinners from 2012 are senior Larry Iverson and junior Gerrit Chambers. The Huskies welcome in four newcomers, including scholarship freshmen Jonathan Sanders and Tyler Salsbury. Joining them in the freshman class are walk ons Chris Babcock and Kyle Bowser. Besides Washington, there are 15 other teams competing. They are (2012 Golfstat final rankings/preseason Golfworld rankings): Arizona State (81), BYU (69), UC-Davis (121), Gonzaga (180), Loyola-Maryland (168), Minnesota (104), Oregon (5/14), Pacific (84), Pepperdine (89), San Diego State (7/17), Seattle University (N/R), St. Mary's (36), Texas A&M (14/10) and Washington State (117). Live scoring for the team portion of the tournament will be available on Golfstat.com and results from the individual championship will be available each night on GoHuskies.com. Teams will compete in a cornhole tournament following Sunday's practice round. Cornhole is a game in which teams of two try to throw beanbags into the hole of a slanted ramp-like target.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
