SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — It's fitting that the Bay Area-based site of a recent professional major — the 2020 PGA Championship won by Collin Morikawa — will host a 31-team event that includes 18 top-75 teams and four top-25 individuals in the Division I golf ranks.
App State Men's Golf is in this prestigious field, having flown across the country earlier this week to participate in The Goodwin, which is hosted annually by Stanford and held at TPC Harding Park in California.
Wednesday's practice round was a time to have fun replicating famous shots, like when Morikawa drove the green on the par-4 16th hole en route to a critical eagle. Thursday, the serious play starts for real, with the Mountaineers in perhaps the deepest and most talented field they've ever encountered.
Head coach
Alan Cress' connections in the golf world and from his time as a professional or general manager at The Club at Irish Creek in Kannapolis contributed to App State receiving an invitation. The Mountaineers' lineup will feature Surf Club Invitational champion
Addison Beam,
Colin Browning,
Alex Martin,
Herman Huus and
Sverrir Haraldsson.
The 54-hole event will involve 18 holes apiece on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Live results are
available via this link at GolfStat.
In addition to Morikawa's breakthrough major victory at TPC Harding Park, Tiger Woods beat John Daly in a playoff to win the 2005 WGC-American Express Championship at the same course, and Rory McIlroy won the 2015 WGC-Cadillac Match Play there.
The 18 top-75 teams in the field this week are:
No. 7 Tennessee
No. 15 Georgia Tech
No. 19 Cal
No. 22 Georgia
No. 25 Oregon
No. 29 San Diego State
No. 33 UCLA
No. 43 BYU
No. 44 Stanford
No. 48 Long Beach State
No. 52 San Jose State
No. 53 San Diego
No. 54 Pepperdine
No. 56 Washington State
No. 58 Clemson
No. 59 Oregon State
No. 62 Colorado
No. 73 Utah
In addition to App State, the field also includes Cal Baptist, Cal Poly, Howard, Lipscomb, Little Rock, Nevada, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Southern Cal, TCU, UC Davis and Utah Tech. The highest-ranked individuals are Stanford's Michael Thorbjornsen (No. 3) and Georgia Tech's Christo Lamprecht (No. 5).
The 2024 spring season is presented by the Hound Ears Club.
