For the first time in school history, Texas A&M men’s golf will head west Monday to Carlsbad, Calif. to compete at the Gifford Collegiate.
The Aggies will go up against 14 other teams, including SEC foes Arkansas and Tennessee along with Northwestern, San Diego State, Harvard, Oregon, No. 5 Stanford, South Florida, Wisconsin, Marquette, Colorado, San Jose State, Washington and UCLA.
The Gifford Collegiate was first formed to honor UCLA alumni and philanthropist Jack Gifford. Gifford was a UCLA baseball player who passed away in 2009. This event has grown to be one of the most prestigious tournaments that is held during the fall portion of the collegiate season, continuously attracting high caliber players that belong to elite programs across the country that have gone on to compete in the PGA Tour. Some notable players include Coastal Carolina’s Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed, who played at Georgia and Augusta State among many other professional golfers.
For the first time in the young 11-year history of the tournament, the event will be held at La Costa Legends Course. It was previously played at the CordeValle golf course in San Martin, Calif.
A&M heads into this week’s tournament after earning top-five finishes the previous two tournaments, most recently at the Jerry Murray Waterville Invitational held in Ireland where the Aggies notched a second place finish.
Standouts at the Irish Invitational for the Aggies were freshman Max Miller who ended the tournament in 10th place at 15-over par, sophomore Connor Black and teammate Andrew Paysse tied one another, earning an 11th place finish at 16-over par.
The format of the tournament will include a 6,996-yard lay out with par set at 71 and the team stroke play will be 54 holes.
This event marks the final event for the fall season. Notable individual finishes for the Aggies were senior Andrew Lister, who earned a 20th place finish in at the OFCC/Fighting Illini Invitational, as well as seniors Adria Arnaus and Ben Crancer earned fifth and eighth place respectively at the Jackrabbit Invitational.
