May 4, 2010
LAS VEGAS - The No. 13 UNLV men's golf team will compete at the 2010 Mountain West Conference Men's Golf Championship beginning on Thursday, May 6 at the Catalina Course at OMNI Tucson National Golf Club (par 71, 7,144 yards) in Tucson, Ariz.
The 2010 championship will mark the fourth straight year that the tournament will be held in Tucson, Ariz., and just the fourth time in the last 10 years that the MWC Championship will not have been held in Sunriver, Ore. The first MWC Championship was played in Palm Desert, Calif., in 2000, while the 2001-2006 events were at the Crosswater Course at Sunriver.
UNLV won the inaugural MWC Championship in 2000 and again in 2002, and will be looking for its third MWC title this week. BYU won in 2001, New Mexico won the title four straight years from 2003-06, BYU won again in 2007, Colorado State won in 2008 and TCU won last year in a playoff with San Diego State.
Individually, UNLV has had three MWC champions with Michael Kirk claiming medalist honors in 2000, Ryan Moore in 2004 and Eddie Olson in 2008. Olson's three-shot win two years ago tied the tournament's record for margin of victory, which was set in 2002 and tied in 2004, but was eclipsed last year by New Mexico's Steve Saunders' four-shot win at 9-under 204.
Last year, UNLV finished just one shot back as a team at the MWC Championship to finish third at 7-under 845 (TCU at San Diego State tied for first before the playoff at 8-under). Former Rebel Ji Moon led UNLV with a second-place finish at 5-under 208. Derek Ernst and Eddie Olson both tied for 13th at 1-over 214, while Colby Smith tied for 20th at 3-over 216 and Brett Kanda tied for 24th at 4-over 217.
Competing for the Rebels at this year's MWC Championship will be Ernst, Smith, Kanda, Olson and Kevin Penner. This will mark Olson's and Kanda's fourth MWC Championship appearance each, while it will be Ernst and Smith's second appearance. Penner is a freshman. Olson's first career victory was at the 2008 MWC Championship, while Kanda's best finish at the event was a tie for ninth in 2007.
Ernst and Smith have UNLV's best individual finishes this season as Ernst tied for first at both the William H. Tucker Invitational in Albuquerque, N.M., in September, and the Herb Wimberly Intercollegiate in Las Cruces, N.M., in October, and Smith also tied for first at the Tucker Invitational.
The nine MWC teams will participate in the 54-hole tournament, which will begin at 7 a.m. PDT with 18 holes each day from Thursday through Saturday, May 8.
UNLV holds the MWC Championship record for the largest margin of victory, which was 23 shots in 2000.
UNLV has won four team titles this season (the Tucker Invitational, the Wimberly Intercollegiate, the John Burns Intercollegiate in Hawaii in February and the Southern Highlands Collegiate Masters in Las Vegas in March), which marks its most team wins in a season since recording five in 1998-99. UNLV has finished in the top three in seven of its 11 tournaments this season.
The Rebels have played in one previous tournament this season in Tucson, finishing seventh out of 14 teams at the Arizona Intercollegiate, which was played at Arizona National Golf Club in February.
Live stats for the MWC Championship will be available courtesy of Golfstat through a link on UNLVRebels.com. For more information on the MWC Championships, visit TheMWC.com or http://www.themwc.com/champ/10-mgolf-champ.html.
