(Photo: Jack Harris/WCSN)
Asking Arizona State men’s golf coach Matt Thurmond to pick his favorite parts of the Sun Devils’ victory at the Thunderbird Collegiate last weekend was akin to offering him a bread plate and five-star buffet.
With so many good options, it was difficult to choose.
There was the fact that ASU, entering the Friday-Saturday tournament at its home Papago Golf Club ranked No. 2 in the country, won with a team score of 20-under par – 12 strokes clear of second-place Texas and 18 in front of No. 1 Oklahoma State.
Sun Devil junior Kevin Yu was the individual champion as well, posting three scores in the 60s to finish at 12-under to win his first tournament of the year.
“He’s locked in every day,” Thurmond said of Yu. “It’s been frustrating he hasn’t won, because he’s been playing so well. It just hadn’t come together. He plays with that same intensity all the time. And he prepared well for this tournament, looked ready to go, and it showed.”
But it was what Thurmond saw further down the leaderboard that was most fulfilling, stuffing him with optimism ahead of next week’s Pac-12 Tournament and next month’s NCAA Championships.
“We’ve been really deep all year, with five, six, seven guys that can win a tournament,” Thurmond said. “Some of the guys in our seven, eight, nine – again, we don’t even number them – but those guys just maybe not playing in the starting five, they’re really good.”
It was on display at the Thunderbird.
No doubt, there were some aspects of this past weekend that Thurmond – even in victory – was still chewing on after Saturday’s round. Outside of Yu, ASU didn’t have another player on its “A-team” finish in the top 15 of the tournament individually (the Sun Devils also played a “B-team” in the tournament to get most of its roster a chance to play competitively in the tournament). Even junior Alex Del Rey, the Pac-12 Golfer of the Month in March, only finished tied for 24th after shooting one-over par across the three rounds.
“I know we’ve got a lot better,” Thurmond said. “A couple (guys) are pretty upset that they didn’t play great.”
But he gobbled up most of what he saw, especially some of the critical secondary scores that led the team to its fourth tournament title of the year. Junior Blake Wagoner and sophomore Mason Andersen rebounded from bumpy rounds on Friday by shooting 67 and 68, respectively, on Saturday to finish even-par on the weekend, good to tie for 18th in the event. Wagoner was also the only the Sun Devil to play the back nine under par on Saturday, coming in with a score of 31 after birdieing three of the final four holes.
“I was so excited for Blake Wagoner’s round today,” Thurmond said. “Honestly, that was a big-time round. He had kind of been playing just OK the last couple of weeks. And to have that round he did today was awesome.”
The success of ASU’s “B-team” at the Thunderbird was perhaps even more surprising. Sophomore Koichiro Ishika shot three-under for a top-10 finish, fellow sophomore Paul Chaplet finished tied for 11th with a two-under score in the tournament, while freshman Cameron Sisk recorded an even-par total to also tie for 18th. Overall, the “B-team” shot two-under in the event and finished tied for fourth – with the top-ranked Cowboys.
“I’m really proud of our ‘B-team,’” Thurmond said. “We don’t call them that. Our second five that played, they finished pretty high in this tournament. Challenged them to come out and show how deep we are. They did.”
The “great program win,” as Thurmond called it, gives ASU a good problem to have: a lot of golfers peaking at the right time, forcing the coaching staff to make some tough decision on who will compete in the postseason. Everything from a conference title to potentially the third national championship in program history looks to be on the table.
“We have guys right now that are maybe just outside the lineup that would be certainly in the top five for other (teams),” Thurmond said Tuesday, less than a week from the opening round of the Pac-12 Championship next Monday in Eugene. “That makes it hard. But we feel pretty good about our lineup.”
