USF will co-host the American Championship at Southern Hills Plantation Club.
TOURNAMENT: American Athletic Conference Men’s Golf Championship
WHEN: Friday, April 23 – Sunday, April 25
LOCATION: Brooksville, Fla.
COURSE: Southern Hills Plantation Club (Par 72, 7,221 yards)
FOLLOW:Live Scoring | Twitter @USFMGolf, @American_MWGolf
TAMPA (April 22, 2021) – The University of South Florida men’s golf team will tee off in the 2021 American Athletic Conference Championship on Friday, April 23 at Southern Hills Plantation Club in Brooksville. The championship tournament will consist of an eight-team field playing 54 holes over three days.
Teams will play in pairs in a five-count-four scoring format.
Tee times will begin on April 23 between 8-8:34 a.m. off the first tee with No. 7 seed East Carolina and No. 8 seed Temple pairing off. Players from No. 5 seed Wichita State and No. 6 seed Memphis will head out from 8:43-9:17 a.m., followed immediately by No. 3 seed UCF and No. 4 seed Cincinnati at 9:25-9:59 a.m. No. 1 seed SMU and No. 2 seed USF are set to take the course from 10:08-10:42 a.m. to round out the entries on day one. The field will be re-paired for both day two and day three based on subsequent scoring.
SMU enters the championship ranked No. 20 in the latest GolfStat team rankings. USF is ranked No. 35. Memphis is the defending AAC Men’s Golf Champion (2019).
The Bulls have been historically dominant in the AAC Championship since the league’s creation in 2014, winning the conference championship four times – four years in a row from 2015-18. USF placed fourth in the other two championship tournaments (2014 & 2019). A Bull has also won the individual championship in three of the six events.
USF will look for another strong showing in the 2021 Championship in hopes of reaching the NCAA Regionals for the eighth straight season.
THE BULLS
USF is coming off a solid outing in a competitive field at the Thunderbird Collegiate last weekend in Phoenix, Arizona. The Bulls placed 11th in the 17-team field while posting their third-best team score of the season (853). USF finished inside the top 10 in each of its other six tournaments this spring. The Bulls top finish was at the Valspar Invitational (5th) and their lowest team score came at the Florida Gators Invitational (828).
Albin Bergstrom (Falsterbo, Sweden) has led the Bulls in four of their seven tournaments this year, collecting a pair of top-10 finishes and finishing inside the top 25 six times. The sophomore has a team-best scoring average of 70.52 and a season-best 54-hole score of 204. He has carded rounds of par or better in 15 of his 21 rounds. Bergstrom enters the AAC Championship ranked No. 58 in the country individually.
Luke Gifford (Boca Raton) has paced USF at two events this spring and owns a scoring average of 71.52. The sophomore has shot par or better in five of his last six rounds, and 14 of 21 total rounds this season. Gifford’s score of 210 last weekend was just one stroke shy of his 54-hole season low.
Sam Nicholson (Atlantic Beach) is averaging a score of 72.71 through seven tournaments. The freshman has carded nine rounds of par or better with season lows of 67 (round) and 207 (tournament). Kyle Flexsenhar (Lake Mary) is averaging a 73.00 and has shot par or better in eight of his 20 rounds.
Runchanapong Youprayong (Bangkok, Thailand) was the Bulls’ leading scorer at Augusta earlier this month with season-low scores of 67 (round) and 215 (total) to tie for 25th individually. The freshman carries a scoring average of 73.19, and has shown consistent improvement of late by shooting a 72 or better in five of his last 10 rounds.
Those five golfers will comprise USF’s lineup at the AAC Men’s Golf Championship.
Up Next
The NCAA Regionals are slated for May 17-19. The qualifying field will be announced in the coming weeks with conference champions earning automatic bids.
About USF Men’s GolfUSF men’s golf program has captured 16 conference titles and seen players earn 18 All-America honors. From 2015-18 the Bulls captured four consecutive American Athletic Conference Championship titles in wire-to-wire fashion, had three individual conference champions and have earned seven straight trips to NCAA Regionals. The program is led by Steve Bradley, who has been named American Athletic Conference Coach of the Year four times since taking over the program in 2014. The Bulls have posted 19 tournament wins under Bradley entering the 2021 season, by far the most under any coach in program history.
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– #GoBulls –
