Amidst the jitters of six new players settling in for the ASU men’s golf team is some deep-seeded familiarity.
For the three Arizona high school products — David Lowe from Phoenix Brophy, Cameron Palmer from Chandler Hamilton, and Austin Quick from Scottsdale Chaparral — familiarity comes from the unique opportunity ASU brings.
“It’s a dream come true. I have always been around Sun Devil football and golf,” Lowe said. “I have rallied around the whole athletic program all my life. Ever since I could play golf, it was always one of my top two or three schools that I would love to have the opportunity to go play for. To be able to actually be here and be competing with the team, there’s nothing like it.”
Palmer, who received lessons at the ASU Karsten Golf Course, said the only transition has been adapting to college life since ASU feels like home.
“It’s great,” Palmer said. “I know Austin and David real well. We’ve played together since we were six or seven years old. It’s not nearly as big of a jump as (the international players) have.”
Despite the three playing their whole high school careers against one another, the three have built up a friendly rapport with each other.
“It’s honestly great, because we developed relationships all through junior golf,” Quick said. “We are all friends, it’s not like we are opponents or anything. We are all happy to come here and be a team together. It’s just pretty cool we all got recruited.”
Lowe credits Quick for getting him involved with the game of golf.
“To be able to be on the team with Cameron and him, it’s an honor,” Lowe said.
Also coming in with the three from Arizona are three international freshmen — Brandon Cloete from South Africa, Stan Gautier from France, and Mathias Schjoelberg from Norway.
This has been a little unusual for a couple of recent high school graduates, who have not had much playing experience with golfers from other countries. Yet the three regard it as somewhat of a blessing.
“They are really cool kids. They are great teammates and we have already developed a great relationship with them. It’s been a lot of fun,” Quick said.
With only two players with playing experience returning, a lot of pressure will be put on the six freshmen to step in and succeed early.
For the three new Arizona players this is a benefit for a number of reasons.
“Having six freshmen all coming in at the same time, to have an opportunity to go through all four years together, is going to be something pretty special that I don’t think many programs have,” Lowe said. We’ve only gotten to know each other for a couple of weeks now, but already we have a great team chemistry going and throughout the next few years hopefully, we can just become on big family.”
With six seniors and junior Spencer Fletcher leading the way last year, there wasn’t much room in the starting lineup for lone freshman Wes Strang to compete.
While this year’s freshmen won’t have to worry about sitting behind seniors, there will still be a lot of competition as there are ten players trying to secure one of five or six spots for every tournament.
“That’s kind of the main reason why it’s so cool coming here at this time,” Quick said. “We get to meet everyone and everyone is our age and we develop relationships for the next four years with everyone, but also we get a chance to play. We have a chance to establish ourselves early in our college life, whereas a lot of people don’t have that opportunity.”
The trio will make their debut at the Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational in Chicago, Ill. on Sept. 16-18. While the team has not talked much about it there is an eagerness among the incoming freshmen to improve on last year’s 15th place finish.
“We want to restore Arizona State golf in general to its former glory,” Lowe said. “With the amount of tradition this program has, it is just a very special place. Going into the first tournament, whoever the lucky five are that get to travel to that event, hopefully they can represent us and get the season off with some good momentum.”
Reach the reporter at jjmckelv@asu.edu.
