ASU junior Jon Rahm tees off at the 10th hole of the 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open on Feb. 1, 2015. (Andrew Ybanez/The State Press)For the first time in 16 years the ASU men’s golf team scored a hat trick and won its third straight tournament with a win in The Prestige at PGA West tournament on Wednesday.
The Sun Devils shot a 31-under 833 as a team to beat out the second place Stanford Cardinal by four strokes. Junior Jon Rahm shot an 11-under 205 for second place and four strokes behind Stanford’s Maverick McNealy for the individual title. Junior Max Rottluff also placed in the top five, shooting a 10-under 206 for fourth place in the tournament.
The last time the men’s team won three straight tournaments was the spring of 1999 led by Paul Casey and Jeff Quinney when they won the ASU Thunderbird Invitational, Pac-10 Championship and the NCAA West Regionals. That team, coached by Randy Lein, placed fifth in the NCAA Championships after the regional tournament.
“We have played great in the spring, with three different lineups,” ASU coach Tim Mickelson said. “This team is really deep.”
The new face in the lineup this tournament was transfer and redshirt sophomore Grayson Murray who played well for his first time out as a Sun Devil. Murray shot 1-over in both the first and second round but shot a 1-under 71 in the final round to finish with an overall score of 1-over for the tournament. Murray shot 14 birdies over the three rounds.
“I’m so proud of this team for their resiliency,” Mickelson said. “They battle and battle and battle. There’s no quit in any of them.”
The team had three eagles in the tournament, two of them from Rottluff who eagled on the par-5 11th hole in the first two rounds. He birdied the hole in the final round. Rottluff shot 6-under in the second round with no bogeys. The other eagle came from sophomore Nicolo Galletti who eagled on the par-5 fourth hole. Galletti shot 3-over par in the round.
Rahm had 16 birdies against just three bogeys and one double-bogey over the three rounds to lead the team.
Freshman Tobias Eden shot 6-over over the three rounds after a first round where he shot 10-over. However, Eden was able to recover after the poor round and shot 2-under in both rounds two and three with 10 birdies in those two rounds.
Led by Rahm and Rottluff, this tournament was another statement from the team in a field filled with top-10 teams Oregon and UCLA and extremely talented teams like Stanford, LSU and USC.
Next on the schedule is the Southern Highlands Collegiate Masters in Las Vegas on March 9 at the Southern Highlands Golf Club.
Reach the reporter at wslane@asu.edu or on Twitter @bill_slane.
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