The No. 2 Stanford men’s golf team tied for fourth place at the Arizona State Thunderbird Invitational last weekend at the Karsten Course in Tempe, Ariz.
Sophomore David Chung shot a final round 68 to finish tied for eighth among the individual leaders, three strokes behind co-medalists JJ Spaun of San Diego State and Chris Williams of Washington.
Chung recorded eagles on the par-5, 527-yard 14th hole and the par-5, 581-yard 17th hole.
Williams needed a seven-under 64 on Sunday to earn a share of the individual title.
Stanford shot a team score of 281 on Friday morning and followed it up with a 290 in the afternoon. After two rounds, the Cardinal was 17 strokes behind first place Arizona.
On Saturday, Stanford fired a nine-under-par team score of 275, the second-lowest score of the final round. The Cardinal finished tied with Oregon and Arizona at a cumulative score of 846, in fourth place.
Freshman Andrew Yun wrapped up an impressive weekend with a 70 on Saturday to finish in 16th place.
Stanford junior Steve Ziegler had six birdies and only one bogey in the final round for a five-under 66. He climbed 29 spots up the leaderboard to finish tied for 22nd.
Senior Joseph Bramlett, who recently returned from a series of wrist surgeries which kept him off the course for most of his sophomore and junior seasons, tied for 35th after shooting 70, 74 and 71.
Sihwan Kim, a usually dependable veteran, had one of his worst tournaments as a collegian. He struggled on Friday with an 82 and an 89. On Saturday he shot an 81 to finish in 89th place.
Freshman Steve Kearney played as an individual and tied for 61st after a closing-round 74.
Washington (839) shot an impressive 16-under 268 over the last 18 holes to capture the team title. UCLA finished second, followed by USC in third.
Starting this Sunday, Stanford is hosting the 42nd Annual U.S. Intercollegiate Golf Tournament at the Stanford University Golf Course.
Five of the top 10 teams in the nation will participate, including No. 3 Washington, No. 4 Oregon, No. 6 UCLA and No. 8 Arizona State.
Other teams in the field include California, Oregon State, San Francisco, USC and Washington State.
Six of the nation’s top 20 players are expected to be in the field — No. 1 Diego Velasquez of Oregon State, No. 3 John Chin of UC-Irvine, No. 4 Eugene Wong of Oregon, Kim of Stanford and No. 19 Brooks Kopeka of Denver.
Defending champion No. 17 Nick Taylor of Washington will also play.
This year, the winner of the U.S. Intercollegiate will earn an automatic exemption into the 2010 Reno-Tahoe Open, which takes place from July 15-18 at the Montreux Golf & Country Club.
“Over the years, the U.S. Intercollegiate has become one of the top West Coast college events,” Stanford head coach Conrad Ray told GoStanford.com. “The Stanford Golf Course stands up to par, and the weather forecast looks good, so we should have a fantastic competition.”
“With the majority of the Pac-10 Conference in attendance, the level of play will be very high,” Ray added. “Our guys really look forward to playing well at home because there is a lot of local knowledge about playing Stanford well, so I hope we can execute our plan properly. We are also excited about the Reno-Tahoe Open exemption. It is the first for our event, and a really neat thing for college golf in general.”
Washington won last year’s event with a 36-under team score of 804. The Cardinal placed fourth last year with an 11-under 829.
Stanford has won the event 12 times since the inaugural tournament in 1968.
The last Stanford golfer to win the individual title was Rob Grube, who captured medalist honors in 2006 and 2007.
Stanford will look to get back on track on its home course this weekend at the U.S. Intercollegiate on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.