Heading overseas, ASU men’s golf head coach Matt Thurmond will try to guide Team USA to victory at the 2024 Arnold Palmer Cup in Ireland, but he will coach against two of his own Sun Devil players.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!On July 5-7 at Lahinch Golf Club in Lahinch, Ireland, Thurmond, junior Preston Summerhays and Team USA will face freshman Wenyi Ding, junior Josele Ballester and the international team.
Since 1997, the annual Arnold Palmer Cup has been a similar competition to the Ryder Cup where it features the best current men’s collegiate golfers born in the United States take on others who came from a foreign country. The event organizers recently added a women’s competition too in 2018. In all-time history, Team USA is 14-12-1.
This past season for Arizona State was one of the more successful years in program history, and these four will look to carry on the momentum of winning the 2023-24 Pac-12 title into Europe. The Sun Devils also won the Cypress Point Classic match play event in the fall and both the Cabo Collegiate and Thunderbird Collegiate this spring leading up to the conference championship.
Under Thurmond this season, Ding was a first-team All-American, Summerhays was nominated to the third-team and junior Josele Ballester received an honorable mention. Summerhays was on the first-team last year.
During his first year in collegiate golf, Ding was named both the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year. He was also the fifth ASU golfer to be a first-team All-American in the last 17 seasons, joining Summerhays, Chun An Yu (2019), Jon Rahm (2015 and 2016) and Max Rotluff (2015).
Thurmond’s program has been a golf powerhouse since he got the head coaching job eight years ago. 10 All-Americans have received the honor 18 times and the Sun Devils have won four Pac-12 championships with Thurmond. He was also the Coach of the Year in 2005, 2009 and 2019.
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Reporter Alec Cipollini covers ASU Athletics, Phoenix Mercury and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on his X account, @AlecCipollini
