May 5, 2010
SAN DIEGO - Coming off an 18-day break, the San Diego State men's golf team seeks its first Mountain West Conference title starting Thursday at the par-71, 7,144-yard OMNI Tucson National Golf Course in Tucson, Ariz. The No. 31 Aztecs are one of five teams ranked in the top 45 nationally in the field that will compete at the three-day, 54-hole 2010 MWC championships.
SDSU narrowly lost the title a year ago, falling in a playoff to TCU, despite posting its best-ever team score at a conference championship with an 8-under 844. The Aztecs erased a seven-stroke deficit heading into the final 18 holes to force the playoff and had four golfers finish in the top seven on the individual leaderboard.
The runner-up performance in 2009 was the fourth time San Diego State has taken second in the 10-year history of the MWC. The Aztecs were second in 2001, 2003 and 2006, and have also been fourth and fifth on two occasions each.
Head coach Ryan Donovan will bring five SDSU student-athletes to Tucson, including junior Johan Carlsson (Gothenburg, Sweden), sophomores Andrew Cooley (New Haw, England), Colin Featherstone (Fallbrook, Calif.) and J.J. Spaun (San Dimas, Calif.) and freshman Tom Berry (New Haw, England).
Carlsson was sixth at last year's MWC tournament, while Spaun, the reigning conference player of the month, took seventh. Cooley, Featherstone and Berry will each be competing in their first conference championship.
This is the fourth straight year that the league tournament has been played at the OMNI Tucson National Golf Resort & Spa. The Aztecs have played in the state of Arizona twice already this season at the Arizona Invitational at Arizona National in Tucson in February and more recently at the Thunderbird Invitational at Karsten Golf Course in Tempe last month.
San Diego State will be paired with No. 12 UNLV and No. 24 TCU for Thursday's first round beginning at 7 a.m. MST from the first hole. All three rounds feature live stats on goaztecs.com as well as golfstat.com.