I’ll admit it. I don’t watch a lot of golf.
However, when browsing through my Twitter feed a @StatePressSports tweet grabbed my attention with a mention about a the ASU golf team:
@statepresssports talks golf to its followers. Photo by Evan Triantafilidis.A freshman had played three solid rounds of golf and locked in his first invitational win.
Jon Rahm Rodriguez, originally from Spain, had been busy posting record scores before his first invitational win at the Bill Cullum Invitational.
Rodriguez is one of four international student-athletes on the Men’s Golf Roster.
Germany, Norway and South Africa are the other countries represented by players on the golf team. The roster includes four other players who have graduated high school in Arizona, and two other out of state players.
After a little more Twitter browsing, an even more interesting tweet caught my eye:
Some more tweets rolling in on the young golf-star-- from the coach himself. Photo by Evan Triantafilidis.In his first few months, Rodriguez was posting up scores that made sports historians go back to the record books to dust them off.
In two rounds of golf in the Pac-12 preview, fellow freshman teammate Max Rottiuff clubbed a 15-under par to impress the coaches and team.
In a game where you want the lowest possible score, the freshman pair are keeping their strokes limited and leading the team to success in the early tournaments.
With all this said, I have many reasons to wonder why golf isn’t a much more popular sport.
Sure, watching a little white ball not even two inches in diameter on your flat-screen television may not be the most interesting thing to watch.
However, in what other sport will you have such a diverse roster at this level? Where else will you see true freshman making their mark on the fairway so convincingly in their first few tournaments?
This ASU Men’s Golf team is the answer in a nutshell.
I want to take the 140-character limit tweets about the team, and get the full story behind the young, international golf squad.
So what was this then?
Suspense — for the beginning of the season for ASU’s most diverse sport team and those who put them on the map.
Tune in next week as I go more in-depth with the ASU Men’s Golf team and talk to coaches and players about the Pac-12 Preview, and the upcoming season. You can reach me at etrianta@asu.edu
