After more than a two week hiatus, the Texas A&M men’s golf team returns to the links in Las Vegas, Nevada for this week’s Southern Highlands Collegiate Masters, spanning from March 9-11 and hosted by the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
UNLV comes in as defending tournament champion after defeating the University of Stanford by two shots in last year’s event. UNLV’s head coach, Dwaine Knight, looks forward to his program hosting the Collegiate Masters.
“We will have our hands full in hosting the Collegiate Masters next week,” Knight said. “The best teams in the nation will be here and the course will be in immaculate shape. It will be incredible and will be a real test.”
Ten of the 15 competing teams in this year’s field are ranked inside the top 25, including the nation’s top ranked University of Illinois. The No. 4 University of Texas, No.10 Texas Tech University, Texas Christian University, and Southern Methodist University join A&M as teams representing the state of Texas in the field.
The Aggies appear this week after recording their most successful finish of the 2014-15 campaign at their previous event in Hawaii at the John A. Burns Intercollegiate. As a team, the Aggies secured an outright fourth place finish out of 17 teams with a three round cumulative score of +8 (872). Junior Adrià Arnaus led the Aggies in Hawaii, carding three consecutive rounds of even par or better (70, 72, 70), which positioned himself into a tie for third.
Tournament action, which will be in the standard 54-hole format, tees off at 8 a.m. tomorrow, with pairings going off both the first and tenth holes of the par 72, 7,510 yard Southern Highlands Golf Club in Las Vegas.