The Iowa State men’s golf team played in The Prestige at PGA West from the 20th to the 22nd February.  The field consisted of seven teams currently ranked in the Golfstat top 50.  As of the 14th March Iowa State are ranked 50.

The team finished in a tie for 6th with Nick finishing in a tie for 12th.  Nick had rounds of 69, 69 and 74 for a total of 212.  The winner, Jared Du Toit from Arizona State University had a total of 204.

In Nick’s own words…

The Prestige at PGA West is always one of my favorite events. We stay at the most magnificent resort; the La Quinta resort. The place is like golf heaven; courses are scattered all over the area and the surrounds are breathtaking. We are truly spoiled throughout the whole week – we get a glimpse into the life of a successful touring pro.

We played really solid and gave ourselves a chance to win the whole thing with 6 holes to go. It is quite a big event in the grand scheme of things and so it was quite a cool position to be in! Unfortunately, those last 6 holes ending up being our undoing and our resulting tie for 6th didn’t really capture how well we had played.

I had quite a cool experience with 6 holes to go – I was the last one in our team to go through this point and so I saw the leaderboard and our one shot margin at the top!  It was a really cool moment because I reflected on the hard work we had all put in and how proud I was of our team. We truly capture what it means to be one unit working towards a common goal.

PGA West Greg Norman Course

There are six courses at PGA West and the Greg Norman course is the newest and the only Greg Norman designed course in the Coachella Valley.  It was built in 1999.  It is aptly described as being very “challenging but fair.”  Sporting only 68 acres of lush manicured turf, 102 white crushed marble bunkers and shark blue water coming into play on 9 holes this is a true “Outback” experience.

Resting in a prehistoric ocean bed 40-feet below sea level and surrounded by an immense crescent of terra cotta mountains, the course teems with purple, white and yellow wildflowers, while the mix of tall and short native grasses produce different shades of green running almost to silver.