ASU Golf: School desires to host NCAA Championships across all sports, starting with golf in 2020

Arizona State will host the NCAA Golf Championships for men and women for three consecutive years starting in 2020, Arizona State University and the NCAA announced last Tuesday.

The tournaments will be held at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale on their Raptor course and will be televised on the Golf Channel.

ASU last hosted the Championships in 1992 when the women competed at ASU Karsten. The ASU men’s were last held in Arizona in 1971 in Tucson, however, Arizona State have never hosted.

The ASU women are a record eight-time NCAA champions, including this year’s team led by coach Miss Farr-Kaye and seniors Linnea Strom and Monica Vaughn.

“To have the NCAA Championships in the Valley is an incredible addition to our community,” Farr-Kaye said. We have the people, the course and the environment to stage three incredible years of championships. There will be no better experience than a Phoenix crowd watching and encouraging all teams.”

The ASU men’s team have won two NCAA titles throughout their history, but not since 1990 when Phil Mickelson was leading the Sun Devils.

ASU head coach Matt Thurmond says it is going to take a lot of time to put together, but it will be worth it in the end.

“The commitment it takes in vision, resources and time it takes to host six NCAA Championships is massive,” Thurmond said. “This shows the incredible support for our golf programs by our athletics department and this community. This will be an amazing addition to the local sports calendar.”

The NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments have been held at the same sites the past three years, including in Eugene, Oregon 2016.

Before Eugene, the championships were most recently held in the west in 2008 for the women in Albuquerque and in 2012 for the men in Los Angeles. This will be the first time the tournaments are held at the same course for consecutive years.

Ray Anderson, ASU’s vice president of Athletics, is happy to showcase Arizona as one of the best golf destinations in the country.

“We are fortunate to live in one of the most prestigious golf destinations in the country, so what better place to host the NCAA Golf Championships than Scottsdale,” Anderson said. “We intend to illustrate why Arizona is the perfect place for the NCAA golf championships.”

Anderson doesn’t want to stop with golf however; he wants Phoenix to be the home for many future NCAA Championships.

“We declared very vocally that ASU wants to be the place where championships for the NCAA come out here on a regular basis,” Anderson said. “So, golf is our first opportunity to prove that we can do this at a high level.”

Farr-Kaye has been with ASU women’s golf since she was a college freshman playing for the Sun Devils and she is optimistic that with the championship her team just brought back to Tempe, Arizona State will be hosting more and more NCAA Championships in the near future.

“We had to travel a long way when we won the NCAA’s in May, so think sooner rather than later ASU will be hosting and not traveling long distances to these NCAA Championships it seems like we’re competing in ever year,” Farr-Kaye said. “With us winning this year and I know there are teams competing every year, so I think it will really pick up.”