March 31, 2010
LAS VEGAS - The UNLV men's golf team, which moved up a spot this week in the Golfstat rankings to No. 7 in the nation and stayed at No. 11 in Golfweek's poll, will travel to Tempe, Ariz., for the 38th annual ASU Thunderbird Invitational, which will be played at ASU's Karsten Golf Course (par 71, 7,057 yards) on Friday and Saturday, April 2 and 3.
The 15-team tournament will consist of 36 holes played on Friday and a final round of 18 holes taking place on Saturday.
ASU has won seven of the past 11 Thunderbird Invitational tournaments, including last year as the Sun Devils won with a 14-under 838. ASU's Stephan Gross and New Mexico's Steve Saunders each tied for medalist honors in 2009 at 3-under 210. UNLV placed 11th at last year's Thunderbird with a 54-hole total of 17-over 869. Eddie Olson turned in UNLV's best finish a year ago as he tied for ninth at even-par 213.
This year's field is made up of Arizona, host Arizona State, BYU, California, Colorado State, Oregon, Oregon State, San Diego State, Stanford, UC Irvine, UCLA, UNLV, USC, Washington and Washington State.
Playing for the Rebels this week will be Derek Ernst, Colby Smith, Brett Kanda, Olson and Jeremiah Wooding.
In its last tournament, UNLV finished sixth out of 16 teams at the Callaway Golf Collegiate Match Play Championship, which was played in Marana, Ariz., just outside of Tucson, March 21-23. UNLV has won four team titles this season, which ties the most the program has had in a season since 1996-97 when the team also won four tournaments. The last time the Rebels won five tournaments in a season was during 1998-99.
Live scoring of the tournament will be available on the internet courtesy of Golfstat through a link at UNLVRebels.com.
