COLUMBIA, Mo. – Mizzou Men's Golf will tee off the 2015-16 season looking to score a fourth-straight win at the Turning Stone-Tiger Intercollegiate, with play running from Sunday, Sept. 5-Monday, Sept. 6, in Verona, N.Y.
For the seventh time, Mizzou will host the tournament that takes place on the par-71 Kaluhyat course at Turning Stone Resort in head coach Mark Leroux's home state. Fifteen teams will be competing, including Alabama State, Binghamton, Boston College, Cleveland State, Grand Canyon, Hartford, Loyola, Northern Kentucky, Sacred Heart, Saint Peter's, Seton Hall, Villanova, West Virginia and Xavier.
Even though the Tigers missed out on an NCAA Championship appearance in 2015, the squad turned in a solid campaign, which included wins at the Turning Stone Intercollegiate, the Patriot Intercollegiate, and the Bandon Dunes Championship. Leroux's group also recorded several top five team finishes, including the Wendy's Kiawah Classic and the Middleburg Bank Intercollegiate.
Guiding this year's squad along with Leroux, who is entering his 12th season at Mizzou, will be new assistant coach and former Memphis golfer, Grant Milner, who brings a new perspective, and plenty of experience in his first year on the staff.
Leading Mizzou into its first tournament of the season will be redshirt senior Wilson Sundvold, a native of Columbia, Missouri. He hopes to build on a 2014-2015 campaign in which he finished six events as one of Mizzou's top three golfers, while also earning a nod from the Golf Coaches Association of America, who named him a Cleveland Golf/Srixon All-America Scholar. He will be tested as an individual in both golf and in leadership, as he is Mizzou's lone senior this season.
Hayden Buckley is next in the lineup for the Tigers, coming off a freshman season that included three top three finishes among Mizzou's golfers. Although the Belden, Mississippi, native started the season playing as an individual, he quickly asserted himself as one of Mizzou's starting five after just one event, and stayed there for the remainder of the season.
Euan Walker, from Troon, Scotland, holds the third spot in Mizzou's lineup heading into the Turning Stone event, where he placed fourth last year. Walker is coming off an impressive sophomore campaign, where he not only posted seven top three finishes among Mizzou's golfers, but also two ninth place overall tournament finishes; one at the Patriot Intercollegiate and the other at the Wendy's Kiawah Classic.
Fourth in the lineup for the Tigers is Matt Echelmeier, an incoming freshman and younger brother of current junior Will Echelmeier. The younger Echelmeier is coming into his first collegiate event with plenty of confidence, coming off an impressive win at the Columbia Golf Championship this August. A hometown addition for the Tigers, he also helped lead Rock Bridge High School to a state championship in 2014.
Rounding out Mizzou's starting lineup is Preston Fleener, an incoming freshman from Mission Hills, Kansas. Fleener is coming off an impressive high school career at The Pembroke Hill School.
Redshirt junior Jacob Fair of Monnet, Missouri, will also take on the course, playing as an individual. Fair enters the season hoping to build on a strong finish to his 2014-15 campaign, where he finished tops among his fellow Tiger golfers in two of the last three events he played in.
Stay tuned to @MizzouMensGolf on Twitter for the latest news on the Tigers.
Finishing up our first practice round here at Turning Stone. pic.twitter.com/ohhvFZRIAJ
— Mizzou Men's Golf (@MizzouMensGolf) September 4, 2015