SAN DIEGO -- The San Diego State men's golf team wraps up its fall portion of the schedule at the prestigious Jackson T. Stephens Cup, Oct. 9-11, at Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas. The Aztecs are one of just seven teams in the invitational event that will air live on the Golf Channel.
SDSU will play 36 holes on Monday, and 18 on Tuesday before match play will settle the competition on Wednesday on the par-72, 7,369-yard course.
San Diego State, which is ranked 35th in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin team ratings, will be joined at the event by No. 8 Arkansas, No. 23 Arizona, No. 24 LSU, No. 28 Florida State, No. 29 SMU and No. 49 Stanford. In addition to the schools competing for the Jackson T. Stephens Cup team titles, seven individual collegiate leading players from U.S Military Service Academies and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will also compete in the stroke play portion of the tournament.
The Aztecs are slated to play their first two rounds with the individuals on Monday, starting out from the 10th hole at 7:35 a.m. CT (5:35 a.m. PT) and beginning their second round from the first hole at 1:30 p.m. CT (11:30 a.m. PT). Tuesday's tee times will be based on Monday's scoring.
San Diego State is coming off a third-place finish out of 20 teams at the William H. Tucker Intercollegiate, Sept. 25-26, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Aztecs shot a 14-under-par 850. Tournament host New Mexico won the team event at -29 with Texas Tech three back at -26. San Francisco (-12) and UNLV (-11) rounded out the top 5.
Junior Tyler Kowack (Del Mar, Calif./La Jolla HS) holed out for eagle on the par-4, 428-yard sixth hole to become the second SDSU men's golfer to win an event this fall as he captured medalist honors at the event. Entering the day in a tie for sixth place out of 104 competitors, Kowack fired a 5-under 67 on the par-72, 7,546-yard UNM Championship Course to win the event at 11-under 205. Starting his final round on the sixth hole in the shotgun start format, Kowack was 4-under through his first 16 holes before bogeying the par-5, 492-yard fifth. Facing a roughly 100-yard second shot into an elevated pin on the sixth, however, Kowack spun a lob wedge back five feet from the hole into the cup for what proved to be a walk-off winner.
It was the first collegiate win for Kowack and second victory by an Aztec through three fall events this season, joining a Justin Hastings (Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands) win at the Maui Jim Intercollegiate (Sept. 8-10). An SDSU golfer now has individual wins in three of the last five tournaments, including Dylan Oyama (Carlsbad, Calif./Pacific Ridge HS) at the 2023 Mountain West Championship last spring, and Hastings and Kowack this fall.
Kowack leads the team with a 69.89 scoring average through three tournaments this fall, one shot ahead of Hastings (70.00). Joining Kowack and Hastings this week in the lineup in Texas are Shea Lague (Jamul, Calif./Steele Canyon HS) (70.56), Chanachon Chokprajakchat (Bangkok, Thailand) (71.78) and Oyama (74.67).
San Diego State is competing in its second Jackson T. Stephens Cup and first since the inaugural tournament in 2021. In the 2021 edition, the Aztecs finished sixth of six teams in the stroke play portion before beating Alabama, 3-2, in match play.
The Jackson T. Stephens Cup is named in memory of the late Augusta National Chairman, Jackson T. Stephens, and launched in 2021. The tournament features NCAA Division I National Championship-contending men's and women's teams alongside collegiate players representing Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and the United States Service Academies.
Built in 2014, Trinity Forest Golf Club resembles many of the great old courses of the Northeast and Great Britain, featuring a links style course on a rolling meadow with tall native grasses and dramatic bunkering and green complexes. The team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw – Coore & Crenshaw, Inc. – designed both the championship golf course and the nine-hole "Horse Course". The design of Trinity Forest honors classic golf courses with traditional, strategic golf and great artistry as the guiding philosophy.
Following the Jackson T. Stephens Cup this week, SDSU returns to action in the spring with the Southwestern Invitational, Jan. 29-31, at North Ranch C.C. in Westlake Village, California.
SDSU Men’s Golf Set for Jackson T. Stephens Cup
