ASU Men’s Golf: Sun Devils stumble to fourth place finish in Pac-12 Championship

(Photo: Jack Harris/WCSN)

It was a rough showing for Arizona State during the Pac-12 Championship this week in Eugene, Oregon.

The No. 2 ranked Sun Devils finished fourth, shooting a season-worst 23-over as a team throughout the tournament, the first time ASU hasn’t been under-par as a team in an event this year.

No. 17 Stanford took home the Pac-12 Championship title shooting seven-under, UCLA and California finished second and third respectively.

While the individual champion of the tournament, Cal senior Collin Morikawa, shot an outstanding 12-under through all four rounds, the Sun Devils top players could never get going.

Kevin Yu couldn’t continue his title-winning performance from the Thunderbird Collegiate earlier this month. After an opening-round 1-under, the junior was in the black the rest of the week and finished four-over for the event. Junior Alex Del Rey, the Pac-12 Golfer of the Month for March, didn’t fare any better as he finished at 9-over, tied for the highest score on the team.

Sophomore Mason Andersen posted solid scores of two-under and even-par in the second and third rounds, respectively, but struggled to match them with good bookends and was 4-over for the event. Junior Blake Wagoner was 7-over for the week, while the lone ASU freshmen on the trip Cameron Sisk posted a 6-over tournament score. Sophomore Won Jon Lee was the other Sun Devil to shoot 9-over.

No ASU player finished in the top-15 individually, either.

Although it wasn’t the outcome the Sun Devils hoped for, coach Matt Thurmond looked for positives during the week. Before Wednesday’s final round, he tweeted, “Winning and losing comes and goes but how hard you compete doesn’t have to. I’m as excited for this round today as I have been for any round in a long time. Every day is an opportunity to wake up and give it all you’ve got because that’s what it is to really live and compete.”

Indeed, his Sun Devils moved up the leaderboard on the final day, going from sixth to fourth after shooting 9-over as a team.

The Sun Devils now await to see where they get placed for the NCAA Regionals, which will be announced May 1 at 9 p.m. on the Golf Channel.

“I’m really proud of how we battled today,” Thurmond tweeted later on Wednesday. “Fourth isn’t what we hoped for this week, but it was the best we could do starting today.”