(Photo: Mark McCormick/ Olympia Field Country Club)
Matt Thurmond and Arizona State men’s golf wrapped up their front nine of the season, following a top-five team and individual finish for the Sun Devils at the Williams Cup.
ASU made the hike across the country to Wilmington, North Carolina, for the tournament. After competing in Big 12 Match play a week prior, the Sun Devils returned to a more traditional competition format with a three-day, three-round, stroke play event.
The tournament was hosted by the University of North Carolina, the No. 13-ranked team in the country according to the Bushnell/Golfweek D1 Coaches’ Poll. The Sun Devils entered the event ranked No. 17, while other notable teams in the field included No. 1 Auburn, No. 9 Florida, No. 12 Vanderbilt, No. 15 Notre Dame and No. 18 Oklahoma.
In the Sun Devils’ final event of the fall schedule, they put up a very positive performance, shooting 7-over-par as a team and finishing fourth out of 14 teams. However, they were 26 strokes behind the Williams Cup champions, Florida.
Six Sun Devils competed in the event, including the return of high touted fourth-year Fifa Laopakdee. However, the native of Thailand competed as an individual in his first collegiate tournament of the season, not apart of the Sun Devils’ roster.
Laopakdee fired 6-over-par over three rounds and finished in a tie for 41st. This found him in the bottom half of the Sun Devils for the event, but was highlighted by a strong 1-over-par final round that saw a very clean scorecard with only two bogeys.
The highlight of the tournament was first-year French phenom Oscar Couilleau, who, following his 10-under-par and tied-6th finish at the Fighting Illini Invitational in September, backed that up with a 4-under-par finish, tying for 3rd place.
The Sun Devils only left-hander shot under-par in all three rounds and converted 12 birdies to just eight bogeys over the course of the event, and did not make double-bogey or worse once.
ASU’s other top-25 finisher was second-year Boston Bracken, who shot 3-over-par and tied for 22nd. He shot the only non-Couilleau under-par round for the Sun Devils in round 3, where he posted 2-under-par and led the way to an impressive 3-under-par team score in the final round.
The next two Sun Devils on the leaderboard were fourth-year Connor Williams and second-year Nguyen Anh Minh, who both tied with Laopakdee at 6-over-par and 41st place. Williams put two good rounds together to start, shooting back-to-back 71’s (1-over-par), before regressing on the back nine of round 3, where he made bogeys on holes 11-14.
Minh had an up-and-down tournament, shooting 1-over-par in round 1 and 5-over-par in round 2 – a round that included a double bogey for the Oregon State transfer. He then bounced back and shot even-par in his final round.
The Sun Devils’ worst performer of the tournament was second-year Bowen Mauss, who shot a team-high 11-over-par and finished tied for 63rd out of 81 golfers. In both of the first two rounds, Mauss’s score was the one that did not count toward the team score. However, he was able to salvage his tournament and help his team with an even-par round in round 3 that saw him claw back from starting 2-over-par through two holes.
The Sun Devils wrapped up a fall season that had some of the highest of highs and was filled with many positives to build on. ASU was able to capture two tournament wins in the Fighting Illini Invitational and Big 12 Match Play, along with the Williams Cup fourth-place finish and the Sahalee Players Invitational sixth-place finish.
The one blemish on the Sun Devils’ record so far was their last-place finish at a highly competitive Ben Hogan Collegiate Invitational; however, they were missing multiple key pieces to their full-strength roster.
The Sun Devils will look to take their positive fall season and turn it into momentum for the spring semester, where things get more competitive, and the tournaments start to mean more as each tournament gets closer to the NCAA Championships.
ASU’s quest for a third national championship will continue in February when the Sun Devils make the trip over the Pacific for the Amer Ari in Hawaii for what will be their eighth straight season teeing it up at the event.
