By all accounts, the 2011-12 season was a rebuilding year for the ASU men’s golf team.
With a new coach and seven out of the nine golfers without prior collegiate experience, the Sun Devils were young and looked tremendously different than last year’s squad.
“Unfortunately, it appears that for the first time since 1983, the men’s golf team won’t be represented in the NCAA postseason,” coach Tim Mickelson said. “(This was) certainly not the first year I wanted. (It’s) certainly very frustrating and disappointing.
“I think that’s a big reason why they brought me in. They want me to turn this thing back around and get guys that are committed to the same thing that I am committed to, which is contending for Pac-12 championships and national championships.”
A silver lining in the transition year was freshman Austin Quick’s strong play in the spring season.
Quick started the spring season with a memorable hole-in-one shot in Hawaii and finished it with a second-place finish in the ASU Thunderbird Invitational.
Spencer Fletcher is the only senior departing from ASU after this season. He played well in the fall season with three top-10 finishes in four appearances, and capped off the run with a win in the Bill Cullum Invitational.
However, Fletcher’s high level of play in the fall season proved to be a mirage, and he reverted back to his career norms in the spring. Fletcher averaged 71.4 strokes per round in the fall and shot nearly five strokes higher per round in the spring.
With a schedule ranked No. 17 in the country by Golfweek, the No. 78 Sun Devils had little margin for error to work with all season.
Consistently facing schools in the upper echelon, ASU was overmatched in the team’s more competitive invitationals.
The Sun Devils’ goal for the regular season was to simply qualify for the postseason and extend the streak of 29 consecutive postseason berths.
The postseason fate was realized when the Sun Devils unraveled and finished last in the Southern Highlands Invitational on March 9 to 11 — the most competitive golf field of the regular season — dropping their record too far below .500 to recover from.
To turn the program around, Mickelson will need to recruit better players. His first recruiting class joins the team in the fall, which will create battles for starting spots.
ASU will conclude its season April 27 through 29 at the Pac-12 championships in Corvallis, Ore.
Half of the Pac-12 schools are ranked inside the top 12 in Golfweek’s latest rankings. ASU is the third-lowest ranked team in the conference. The Sun Devils record is 2-19 against the top six Pac-12 schools and ASU would need to beat all of them to qualify for the postseason.
In addition, the State Farm Territorial Cup Series point is decided at the Pac-12 championship. ASU has a 1-2 record against the Wildcats this season.
Reach the reporter at jmjanss1@asu.edu
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