Finals Week

What a week for Stanford Golf !

Whilst the current team have been taking final exams for their fall classes, two recent graduates have undergone a major golfing examination and passed with distinction. Congratulations to Zack Miller and Joseph Bramlett who have earned their 2011 season PGA Tour cards. Read more about both players and their landmark achievement here.

No one person will be more delighted to hear this latest news than Coach Wally Goodwin, guest of honor for the Stanford Men's Golf Club annual dinner held tonight (12/7/10) at the Faculty Club. Many sports fans would really love to have been a fly on the wall there tonight to gain some insights by listening in to Coach Goodwin's stories! As would Coach Ray and I, but unfortunately we were not able to hear our former coach's address due to a clash with the GCAA Coaches Conference. Thanks therefore go to team captain Steve Ziegler for passing along our apologies.

Of course there must have been plenty of talk about the upcoming Stanford Football "Orange Bowl" too... much to celebrate!

Cheers, and Go Cardinal!

Coach Rowe

2010 Big Game Cup

Since our return from Cordevalle Stanford Golf has hosted two of its fundraiser events. The Cardinal Classic was held on November 12th and the Big Game Cup took place yesterday (November 18th). Both were held at the Stanford Golf Course and were lots of fun for everyone, but most importantly they provided great opportunities for coaches and players to express thanks to its many friends and avid supporters of the Cardinal golf program.

The Big Game Cup matches up die hard Cal Bear supporting golfers against their Cardinal counterparts in the run up to Big Game football weekend.

Here is the Big Game Cup scoresheet published:


By an extremely narrow margin (32.5 to 30.5), Stanford BEAT CAL ...It all came down to the last score posted!

In the Big Game Football matches, Cal have been victorious in the past 7/8 matches. Like Coach Harbaugh, Coach Ray recalled similar dismay for his side prior to this latest Big Game Golf Cup encounter. However, whilst no-one can precisely quote the correlation between Big Game Golf and Big Game Football, Ray and his Stanford supporters are hopeful that perhaps this triumph signifies a turn in fortune.

Friendly rivalry was the spirit of the day and both Coach Desimone of Cal and Coach Ray of Stanford exemplified that spirit in their post match presentations. Turning attentions to the strength of present day Men's Golf teams on both sides of the Bay, "In all my years coaching, I have never known such a phenomenally high standard of college golf and the absolute icing on the cake would be to see Stanford and Cal battle it out down the stretch for the PAC 10 Championships at Stanford and then the 2011 NCAA National Championships at Oklahoma State," said Coach Desimone.

If you are up early tomorrow morning you can listen to Coach Ray and Coach Desimone talking Big Game on 680 am radio "Hooked on Golf" at around 7.15am.


The Cardinal team now break for Thanksgiving followed by "dead week" before "finals" exams.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Philip Rowe

Cordevalle - The final event of the Fall

The Cardinal are heading down to Cordevalle this weekend to dispute the final event of the Fall. "Both as a team and for each individual player, this is the last chance we'll get to put it on show in 2010" rallied Coach Ray to his men following a team workout earlier this week, "it's time to make a statement ahead of a spring Championship season that is really not far away now".

There several causes for optimism as the players prepare to compete at the UCLA hosted event:

1. It feels somewhat like a home event given that the venue is situated only 45 minutes south of the Stanford campus at San Martin. The players know the course well and had a chance to play the course on Monday this week.

2. Stanford picked up first place last year after shooting a team total of 24 under par... See last years results on Golfstat.

3. Sihwan Kim and David Chung finished 2nd and tied 3rd at Cordevalle last year respectively. Sihwan is also a former champion of the event having won it his freshman year. Andrew Yun is fresh off an individual victory at the Prestige and a 4th place finish at Isleworth.

4. David Chung has just returned to the lineup since representing Team USA at the World Amateur in Argentina last week and the Junior All-American is tipped to notch up multiple collegiate victories this season '10-'11. Chung is a player who knows how to win since his stellar summer of winning top level amateur events (the Porter Cup and Western Amateur) back to back this past summer.

5. Top 3 team finishes in the last two events without the Chung and Kim duo in the lineup have demonstrated the Cardinal team's strength in depth. The Gifford Collegiate at Cordevalle is a 6 man team counting 5 from the 6 scores, therefore this 'extra man' format is likely to be advantageous.

See the full team lineup here, follow us live from Cordevalle via http://www.golfstatresults.com and then check back soon for a coach's Fall Season roundup and update.

Go Cardinal!

Philip Rowe

PS.
There are only a couple of team slots left available for the Cardinal Golf Classic event held at The Stanford Golf Course on 11/12/10. Please contact the Men's Golf office to reserve one of those last spots.

PPS. Want to BEAT CAL! ? ...team up for Stanford and take on your Cal counterparts at The Big Game Cup on 11/18/10. Likewise, contact the Men's Golf office for more information and to reserve your spot.

The PGA West Quest - Getting into the routine...

Perhaps a little introduction before I get into my first Coach’s Blog… My name is Philip Rowe, I was a member of the Stanford golf team from 1999-2002 and I have just returned to The Farm after playing on various professional golf tour circuits in Europe. The complete story about my appointment to the position of Assistant Coach with the Men’s Golf Program can be read in this interview.

I have now been with the team 4 weeks and PGA West was my first event as a “Coach”. I have thoroughly enjoyed everything. So far as the results from the PGA West event goes, hopefully you have had the opportunity to check out the Stories of the Season: Report from The Prestige at PGA West. Since our return on Tuesday evening, one of the team players has even posted an update to the Players Blog… Here’s what Sophomore Andrew Yun had to say about his individual victory (by 6 shots) in the desert!

Andrew points out that “this new school year has brought a bit of the new along with the old” and that is definitely what the coaches are sensing as well. Despite adjustments to new routines, the freshmen have already made an impact within the team and are keeping some of the more experienced players sharp on their toes. Our top team lineup might still be under construction but tremendous depth means that every squad member is making preparations for their contribution in a successful NCAA Championship run (a 9th!).

Moving on from the first event in Olympia Fields to last week at PGA West, I think the ultimate encouraging sign is that with 9 holes to play in the final round, we were in contention and poised for both team and an individual victory. That’s the Cardinal back into the routine!

Team in Cardinal Red (from Left to Right): Steven Kearney, Andrew Yun (Individual Champion), Cameron Wilson (finished 5th), Steve Ziegler, Shane Lebow, Coach Ray.

In one week (Friday October 22nd), 5 Cardinal players will be flying to Orlando, Florida for the Isleworth Collegiate Invitational. Check www.stanfordmensgolf.org for updates on qualifying...

Fall in motion!

Dear Friends of Stanford Men's Golf,

The season is underway and we are off to the races...

The team has just returned from our first event at Olympia Fields and the first day of fall quarter classes was yesterday. Everyone is getting settled in and adjusting to new routines. My new Assistant Coach Phil Rowe also started last Friday so there is much to be excited about.

Pre-Season rankings are out and the Cardinal have placed well ... #2 in the Golf Coaches Poll, and #5 in GolfWeek. These polls are hard to judge but neat to see the team recognized for their potential.

The team wasn't happy with the result at Olympia Fields (t-9) but there seems to be plenty of positives to glean from the competition. Attitudes were all positive, the course was a true US Open test, and the vibe is good looking forward to the next event. I must say it was odd not being there personally with the team and just watching on Golfstat. What a stressful experience for the coach! Now I know how the must parents feel! We are expecting our second child any day now and thus being in Chicago for the start of potential labor was not a great idea on the home front! Rob Grube, one of our all time greats, was gracious enough to take the reigns for the trip and help the guys out as their coach for the tournament. Rob is a great role model for the boys with approach, knowledge, and work ethic in his own professional career. Thanks Rob for your help!

Next on the docket is the Stadium Course at PGA West and the Prestige. We always look forward to getting down to the desert and compliments of Pete Dye the Stadium Course is one of the all time great tests of golf. Eager to see how the team fares. I would encourage everyone that is reading this to consider coming down yourselves and making a weekend out of the Prestige. The LaQuinta Resort and PGA West take great care of us and they have also created a package rate for any of our "groupies" for discounts in golf, goodies, and resort fees. Click on the image below for more info.

La Quinta Promotion -- click to enlarge

Finally, if you haven't received the information yet, the date has been set for the Cardinal Classic. We will have our team day on November 12th at the Stanford Golf Course. We hope you can make it out as the day has turned into a vital resource for the team and our endeavors. Always a fun day!!!

Thanks for following the team and for all of your support! Until next time!!!

Go Cardinal!

The summer is winding down!

Friends of Stanford Men's Golf:

A few months have gone by since my last post but much to report on the Stanford Golf Program. The team has been playing great in their individual summer events, I have hired a new assistant, and the new season is approaching with birdies in store!

I am proud to say that Stanford Golf has had a stellar run this summer in most of the nations top amateur fields. We have produced a US Open Competitor (Bramlett), the Northeast Amateur Champion (Bramlett), The Dogwood Champion (Yun), The San Diego Amateur Champion (Kearney), The Western Amateur Champion (Chung), and The Porter Cup Champion (Chung). Not to mention David Chung represented the Stars and Stripes on the United States Palmer Cup Team in grand fashion going 4-0 in his matches against GBI. To date, including alums and future Cardinal committed recruits, we have 6 players gearing up for the United States Amateur Championship in a few weeks at Chambers Bay. We also produced three golf All-American's last spring (David Chung, Sihwan Kim, Steve Ziegler) and one academic All-American (Steve Ziegler). Go Cardinal is all I can say!

Also thanks to Bob Stevens and Pat Phillips for all of their continued hard work keeping track of scores and postings on www.stanfordmensgolf.org.

It is also that time of year to start thinking about the season ahead. The team reports back on September 10 and we will be diving right in. Qualifying will get us ready for our first event again this year at Olympia Fields in the Chicago area ... a amazing course, stout field, and great warm-up for the season ahead.

If you haven't read already about our new assistant please check out Phil Rowe's link on the homepage. Phil is a perfect fit for what we are looking for and eager to welcome him back on the Farm. Phil plans to get going as our new assistant early next month. We all will miss Coach Matt Tight. I want to personally thank him for his dedication and hard work for our program over the last few years. We will miss him and we all wish him well as he moves on to greener pastures.

Finally, we hope you can all save the date for this fall's Cardinal Golf Classic. The Cardinal Golf Classic is slated for a 12:30 shotgun on Nov. 12th this year. We hope you can all make it and please contact us if you are interested in playing. If you don't already know the Cardinal Classic is our annual team fundraiser and it has grown into a really special day for the well being of the program. It is a guaranteed fun day and spaces fill up quickly so please mark it on your calendar.

I hope all of you have been making a bunch of birdies this summer and are enjoying this great game we all love. We are very fortunate to have the support of the Cardinal faithful and I have a feeling that this could be a special year for the team ....

Thanks and Go Card!

Conrad

Ups and Downs and Thanks!!!

Cardinal Faithful ....

If you haven't seen already we can up a bit short in our quest to win the program's 9th National title a few days ago at the Honors Course in TN. We had a great season and the NCAA finals were no different. I think the thing that sticks out about the tournament were the highs and lows and high drama that the team dealt with all week. It was really exciting the whole way ....

High ... Stanford comes back from a slow start the first two rounds of stroke play to get within the "top eight" number the final round with 9 holes to play.

Low .... The guys make a few bogies coming in the final round to end up just one shot out of the top 8 for match play but there are still schools on the course that can affect the final outcome.

High ... San Diego makes 5 bogies on the last hole to let us back in the top 8 and into a playoff the next morning to determine if we qualify for match play.

High ... Stanford plays the first set of playoff holes 2 under par (our best four out of 5 scores) to advance with San Diego and knocking out Arizona State to the second hole of the playoff.

High ... Stanford plays the second set of playoff holes 1 under par (our best four out of 5 scores) to get to match play ....

High / Low .... Stanford draws team medalist Oklahoma State in the first round.

High ... Stanford is up early in all the matches against OSU

Low ... OSU comes back to catch us with stellar putting and solid play to beat us 4 to 1 in the first match ... season ends.

High ... the body of the work from the season speaks for itself .... 3 team wins, a top-5 ranking all year, multiple all conference selections, a Palmer Cup selection, and a season that will be remembered as one of our best.

High ... prospects for next year .... Joseph Bramlett is only loss in starting 5 and Cameron Wilson and Shane Lebow join the squad with huge potential.


Thanks to all of you for following and supporting our team this year! We will be back!

Two rounds in the book ....

Cardinal Faithful:

We have finished up two rounds here in the NCAA Championship at the Honors Course in Chattanooga, TN. The guys have fought hard over the last few days and are very close to the magic number ... the top eight teams that qualify for match play.

We haven't had our best round yet and I believe it will come tomorrow. We need to hit the ball in the fairway a few more times off the tee and we will be in good shape. Big numbers have also been our nemesis so far and our goal is to eliminate the "others". The course is very demanding so I am sure the scores will rise with the tension of the last day of stroke play. I am sure the greens will continue to firm up as well.

Exciting stuff!

More to come.....

Live scoring can be found at: http://golfstatresults.com/public/leaderboards/team/static/team1855.html

Almost there ....

Hi Cardinal Faithful!

I hope to update my blog this week a few more times to keep you tuned in on our trip to the NCAA Finals in Chattanooga, TN at the Honors Course!

We are excited to get going tomorrow with our practice round at 9am. The guys spent today resting, practicing, and getting ready for the start of the week. We practiced today at UT - Chattanooga's new practice facility. A great spot to work out the kinks and thanks to Coach Mark Guhne for his hospitality. It was good to spend some time hitting and chipping off the Bermuda grass ... a tad different than what we see in CA.

Tomorrow we play at 9am in our practice round. It sounds like the course will be a real test. A drive in the rough and a wedge back to the fairway if you are not careful. The practice round is test in patience as there will be 30 teams on the course all trying to take in as much as they can before round 1.

We play the first round Tuesday starting at 12:12 off the 10th tee and then Wednesday we go early with the first time at 7am. Our pairing is with Oregon and Oklahoma State so everyone is excited about playing with two other very talented teams.

We will see what happens! Go Cardinal and more to come......

Post Season!

Hello Cardinal Faithful:

We are down to the nitty gritty and NCAA post season play! We find our NCAA Regional assignment next Monday May 10th, and eager to see what challenge lies ahead. The team is in good spirits after a close call at the Pac-10's last week at the ASU Karsten Course in Tempe. We jumped out to an impressive lead after the first day with some of the best golf I have witnessed out of our guys all season. We continued to play solid the rest of the event but hats off to the Washington Huskies for tracking us down. They closed strongly and ended up clipping us by three shots. A razor slim margin when counting five scores out of six guys. A ton of positives came out of the week even though finishing second is not the greatest feeling .... Sihwan Kim's 63 in round 1 and the play of Joseph Bramlett with three consecutive 66's were worth noting. I believe we have some good momentum as we approach Regionals and the guys have been grinding to be well prepared to try and win our 9th NCAA crown.

Recruiting for the new year continues to keep us busy as well. Cameron Wilson and Shane Lebow will be huge adds for us next year and in the 2011 entry class we have a very qualified, highly ranked, pool of players that will hopefully some day call themselves Cardinal!

I hope that if you are near our post season venues that you will come out and cheer us on! Go Cardinal and thanks for all of your support.

Snake Bit!

Hello Stanford Golf Fans!

A quick note to check in and update you on our recent trip this past week to the Callaway Collegiate Match Play event at the Dove Mountain Resort in Tucson. The team was coming off their winter quarter finals but still hoping for the best as we went down to experience the same course the WGA Accenture Match play was held on a month earlier. What a venue! Very demanding and beautiful! We won our first match against Indiana but it was a battle from there losing the next three matches in tight competition. Here is a picture of the guys during the practice round ...



There were some highlights that should be mentioned ... Freshman Steven Kearney played like a champ all week. He was one bad swing away from going 4-0 in his matches and he really did well considering it was only his second event of the year. Senior captain Joseph Bramlett also played well and was impressive in his final match, winning strongly.

All in all, it was one of those weeks that we will chalk up to experience and learn from. It is clear that Match Play is a very different format, and one that we will need to improve in, to have a chance to win another title. The picture below is how we felt all week ... Snake Bit! However, the beauty about this game is that you never know what you are going to get ... maybe next week at ASU we will return to the winners circle. Go Cardinal!

Winter Quarter Update ....

Greetings from the Farm! It has been a while since I last updated my blog. There have been a lot of things going on and great news to report!

The biggest story is our first big win of the year at Mauni Lani on the Big Island of Hawaii in the Hawaii Hilo Invitational. Coach Earl Tamiya, aka Big Earl, put on another great show. The event celebrated it's 20th year and 11 of the top 20 teams in the country were there to compete. With our victory we have won the tournament three of the last four years and each one seems to be more exciting and enjoyable. This year we had a complete team effort with each guy contributing in some important way. Sihwan Kim continues to show that he is in good form with 4th place finish and when we can have 4 guys in the top 30 in the individual rankings we usually will be OK.

Our amazing experience in Hawaii over the last few years has been made possible by our hosts for the week, Sukey and Irv Grousbeck. They make us all feel like we are playing in a "home event". Great food, comfortable accommodations, and loads of encouragement and support from the Grousbeck's really make the week one of a kind. Thank you!

Here is a picture of the team after one of our practice rounds early in the week at Nanea.



More good news is that our Senior Captain Joseph Bramlett is healthy again and back competing 100%. Joe has really gone through a lot with the rehabbing of his wrist and it is great to finally have him back in the mix. He has been a wonderful leader of the team and his return is a great shot in the arm to an already deep team. Joe has been a real professional through all he has gone through.

Finally, looking ahead, we are competing again in the USC Invitational at North Ranch C.C. in Westlake Village in a few weeks. We all look forward to the trip as we are defending champs and this is where Steve Ziegler picked up his first collegiate win last year. There will be many of the West Coast's top schools there so we are eager to get down there again and continue to gain valuable experience on the path the the post season.

We hope you will follow us and thanks for all of your support along the way!

Go Cardinal!