Coming into the final day of the 72nd annual Western Intercollegiate at Pasatiempo tied for ninth place, No. 18 ranked Stanford men’s golf clocked the second-best score of Sunday’s round to claim a sixth place overall finish.
The massive 15-team, 54-hole tournament, held annually in Santa Cruz, saw a rain delay on Saturday that forced the first round to end prematurely and pushed extra action into Sunday’s schedule. Stanford’s golfers, led by senior Jeffrey Swegle, shot 3-under par on Sunday, ending the day with a score of 347, just one more than the tournament’s champions, North Carolina, ended up scoring, as the Tar Heels shot 346.
“Proud of the guys that we were able to shoot one of the lowest team rounds of the day,” head coach Conrad Ray remarked after Sunday’s festivities. “We will need to work on our putting, but I think we are still in a good spot and building the right way.”
Stanford started the final day at a cumulative 7-over par, while North Carolina ruled the leaderboard at 9-under. This was a nearly insurmountable lead for the Cardinal, and the team truly needed to focus on simply playing their best.
Swegle was the shining star for Stanford during Sunday, ending the final round with a 4-under par, and completing the tournament in 16th place, at 1-under par (66). During one stretch of play on Sunday, Swegle sunk three consecutive birdies on holes eight nine, and ten, adding those to his total, and finished the day with six.
The best Stanford performance of the weekend belonged to senior Bradley Knox, who, despite shooting only par on Sunday, finished the tournament in 13th place at 2-under, setting the bar for the Cardinal competitors.
Junior Brandon Wu also had an exceptional performance in the tournament, finishing Sunday with 1-under par (69) and ending the tournament exactly at par, placing 20th overall. The next highest individual member of the Cardinal was sophomore David Snyder, who shot 2-over on Sunday (72) but ended the tournament tied for 31st overall with 3-over par.
The men’s golf team will wrap up their season on April 23nd-25th at the Pac-12 Men’s Golf Championships.
Contact Bobby Pragada at bpragada “at” stanford.edu.