SAN DIEGO – The San Diego State men's golf team will wrap up its fall schedule next week when it travels north to the Monterey Peninsula for the Saint Mary's Invitational, Nov. 5-7, at the renowned Poppy Hills Golf Course in Pebble Beach, Calif.
The Aztecs will be making their fourth straight appearance at the three-day, 54-hole tournament, which gets underway Monday morning on the par-71, 7,002-yard course layout with tee times as early as 7:30 a.m. PT. A live scoring link courtesy of Golfstat will be available for all three rounds.
Ranked 68th in the latest Golfstat index, SDSU will battle 10 additional top-75 squads next week in Pepperdine (8), USC (10), Brigham Young (19), Nevada (36), UCF (49), Oregon (58), Utah (59), San Francisco (62), Santa Clara (66) and Colorado State (71), while host Saint Mary's, Arizona, Fresno State, Oregon State, Toledo, UNC Wilmington and Washington State round out the list of participating schools.
Aztec head coach Ryan Donovan will employ his fourth different lineup for the team's fall finale, starting Leo Oyo (Tokyo, Japan), Aaron Whalen (Ephrata, Wash.), Youssef Guezzale (San Diego, Calif.), Puwit Anupansuebsai (Nakhon Phanom, Thailand) and Zihao Jin (Beijing, China), while Steve Sugimoto (San Diego, Calif.) will compete as an unattached golfer.
Idle since Oct. 9, San Diego State is coming off an eighth-place finish in its last outing at the Alister Mackenzie Invitational in Fairfax, Calif., where it shot a season-best 11-under-par 841. Whalen and Guezzale were the top Aztec players at that event, as each posted a 6-under 207 at the par-71, 6,734-yard Meadow Club. Whalen closed with a flourish, posting cards of 66-69 over the final two rounds, while Guezzale fired a 67-69 over the first 36 holes. Jin also cracked the starting lineup in Marin County, tying for 58th with a 5-over 218, highlighted by a second-round 68.
Next week's tournament represents the 13th installment of the Saint Mary's Invitational, which returns to Poppy Hills for the fourth consecutive season after a five-year run at Bayonet and Black Horse Golf Courses in Seaside, Calif.
SDSU logged a seventh-place standing at the event last season after taking home back-to-back titles in 2015 and 2016. Jin is the lone Aztec starter returning from last year's Pebble Beach excursion, where he tied for 68th with an 11-over 224. Sugimoto, who will be appearing as an individual next week, also made the trip last season, tying for 14th with a 4-under 209.
Defending Saint Mary's Invite team champion USC will likely have three players returning from last year's squad, including medalist Justin Suh, who shot a 13-under 200, while Kaito Onishi tied for second at 8-under 205, followed by Kyle Suppa, who tied for sixth at 6-under 207. Also projected to be back in the mix are San Francisco's Soren Lind, BYU's Rhett Rasmussen, Arizona's Brad Reeves and Colorado State's Parathakorn Suyasri, all of whom tied for eighth at 5-under 208.
Poppy Hills opened in 1986 and has since co-hosted the PGA Tour's AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am from 1991-2009, as well as the Spalding Pebble Beach Invitational (1989, 1990, 1992, 1993) and the 1991 NCAA Men's Golf Championships. Designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr., Poppy Hills became the first course to be owned and operated by a golf association in the United States when the Northern California Golf Association built the club to serve as its headquarters and tournament home.
With a focus on water conservation, Poppy Hills underwent an extensive renovation in 2013 by improving irrigation and drainage. The Jones design firm reinvented the course architecturally, restoring each hole to its natural elevation along the forest floor, softening doglegs and contours, rebuilding all 18 greens with bentgrass, eliminating rough and introducing native waste areas that reduce irrigated turf by nearly 25 percent. The refurbished Poppy Hills opened in April 2014 and has joined the course rotation for the Champions Tour's PURE Insurance Championship.
Following the Saint Mary's Invitational, San Diego State will take a three-month break from competition before opening its spring schedule at The Prestige at PGA West, Feb. 18-20, 2019, in La Quinta, Calif.