Isaiah Salinda of Stanford captured the individual title with a seven-foot birdie putt on the fifth playoff hole and led the Cardinal to a six-stroke victory over rival California in the 73rd Western Intercollegiate at Pasatiempo Golf Club www.pasatiempo.com, Alister MacKenzie’s classic layout in Santa Cruz.
Stanford built some momentum heading into the Pacific 12 Conference Championships next week at Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Ore., by winning its second straight tournament with a score of 354-346-340—1040, followed by Cal at 354-351-341—1046, host San Jose State at 346-353-352—1051, USC at 348-357-347—1052 and Pepperdine at 356-351-353—1060.
“I’m impressed with the way we hung in there and made the putts we needed to win,” said Coach Conrad Ray after Stanford won the Western Collegiate for the third time in six years. “It was great to see them show the discipline it takes to win on this great course.
“Our team definitely made their share of birdies the last two days. This team just keeps plodding along and I’m really proud of them. Everybody stepped up and made some great shots when it mattered.
“This was great preparation for the Pac-12 tournament next week and the challenge of the NCAAs.”
Oregon finished at 348-359-358—1065 to tie for sixth with Colorado State, which totaled 353-363-349—1065, while Arizona was eighth at 359-359-359—1077, followed by San Diego State at 369-364-350-1083 and Washington at 370-367-349—1086.
UC Irvine was 12th at 372-369-373—1114.
Salinda, a senior from South San Francisco, sank a tricky four-foot birdie putt on the final hole of regulation to card a score of 64-68-70—202, 8-under-par, while Yu, a junior from Taiwan who also was seeking his first college title, wound up at 64-71-67—202.
Both made four consecutive pars in the playoff before Salinda sank the winning putt to join the champions list that includes Ken Ventura of San Jose State, Johnny Miller of BYU, Mark O’Meara of Long Beach State, Duffy Waldorf of UCLA Bobby Clampett of BYU, John Lotz of San Jose State, Jerry Heard of Fresno State, Howard Twitty of Arizona State, Peter Jacobsen of Oregon, Mark Lye of San Jose State, Jay Don Blake of Utah State and Arron Oberholser of San Jose State.
“This is neat for Isaiah to get his first college win here,” Ray said. “He’s had a great career at Stanford and this is just special for him, especially coming at this time of year.”
Clay Feagler of Pepperdine was third at 67-68-68—203, followed by K.K. Limbhasut of Cal at 70-70-64—204, while Kaito Onishi of USC shot 69-67-70—206 to tie for fifth with his Trojan teammate, Cameron Henry, who wound up at 66-69-71—206.
Justin Suh of USC totaled 64-74-69—207 to tie for seventh with Collin Morikawa of Cal, who finished at 71-70-66—207, while A.J. Ott of Colorado State wound up at 72-69-67—208, to tie for ninth with his Rams teammate, Jake Staiano, who came in at 69-73-66—208.
Christian Banke led San Diego State in a tie for 17th at 71-71-70—212 and Ramiz Jamal of UC Irvine tied for 26th at 72-71-71—214.
Rounding out the scoring for team champion Stanford were Brandon Wu, who shot 70-74-65—209 to tie for 11th with his Cardinal teammate, Henry Shimp, who totaled 73-68-68—209, while David Snyder finished at 77-69-66—212 to tie for 17th with teammate Freddie Lee, who wound up at 69-74-69—212.
Daulet Tuleubayev tied for 26th at 73-70-71—214, while Nate Menon shot 74-71-73—218 to tie for 47th with Stanford teammate Ethan Ng, who finished at 72-76-70—218.
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