UO Men?s Golf Looks to Continue Solid Play at Western Intercollegiate
EUGENE, Ore. ? Coming off its best showing of the spring -- a fifth-place finish at the Oregon Duck Invitational -- the UO men’s golf team looks for another solid finish when it heads to the 59th annual Western Intercollegiate Monday and Tuesday at Pasatiempo Golf Course in Santa Cruz, Calif.
Oregon will send the same five golfers who finished fifth at the Duck Invitational -- juniors Chris Dukeminier (Eugene, Ore.), Justin St. Clair (Springfield, Ore,) and Gregg LaVoie, and sophomores Matt Ma and Jay Snyder -- to the par-70, 6,445-yard lay out.
"Hopefully we can use what happened at our last event to give us confidence going into Pasatiempo," said Oregon coach Steve Nosler. "Because we will see a lot of the same teams that we beat at Eugene. Another top five finish would be tremendous in terms of helping our NCAA Regional chances."
The 18-team field includes 13 from the Pacific District -- No. 14 UCLA, California, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly, Long Beach State, Oregon, Oregon State, Pacific, San Jose State, Santa Clara and Stanford, as well as Colorado State, Fresno State, Kansas, Nevada and Texas-El Paso.
The top 12 teams from the Pacific District receive automatic bids to the NCAA West Regional, which will be held May 19-21 at Stanford. Typically, another two-to-four teams receive at-large bids. Oregon is currently ranked 16th in the Pacific by Golfweek, behind UCLA, UC Riverside, Oregon State, Stanford, UC Irvine, California, Cal Poly and UC Santa Barbara, who will all be in competition at the Western Intercollegiate.
Those rankings came out prior to Oregon’s fifth-place finish at the March 21-22 Oregon Duck Invitational. The Ducks did not receive a bid to the NCAA Regional in 2004 for the first time in eight years.
Oregon last played in the Western Intercollegiate in 2003 when the Ducks finished fourth. LaVoie tied for 57th at 228 that year, but recovered nicely after an opening round 80 to record scores of 72-76. Oregon won the 55th Western Intercollegiate in 2001.
