Washington Huskies cap big week with win at The Goodwin; Nevada’s Peyton Callens is medalist

(Editor’s note: AmateurGolf.com and Golfweek have teamed up to cover the amateur game from top to bottom.)

It’s been a pretty good week for the Washington Huskies.

Just five days removed from winning the Oregon Duck Invitational, Washington traveled to the Bay Area and claimed its second team title of the week, erasing an eight-stroke final day deficit to win The Goodwin at Stanford Golf Course.

The Huskies, which entered the final round trailing 36-hole leader Stanford by eight strokes, counted rounds by Taehoon Song (65), Petr Hruby (66) and Teddy Lin (69) to shoot 10-under 270 on Saturday to win its fifth team title of the season.

Meanwhile, the host Cardinal, which could only manage a pair of even-par rounds by Michael Thorbjornsen and Henry Shimp en route to a final round 283 (+3), slipped into third place at 17-under 823.

With a winning score of 818 (-22), eighth-ranked Washington has combined to shoot 41-under par over its last two tournaments at Eugene Country Club and Stanford Golf Course.

“We know if we play well we can give anybody a game,” said Washington head coach Alan Murray. “We haven’t won a tournament this year where we’ve had to come from behind so it’s nice to be able to do it here. The guys played awesome.

“Taehoon was 5-under and Petr was 4-under today,” Murray added. “They’ll get the limelight, and rightly so today. It was an awesome round for both of them. I’m so happy and proud of them. We’ll need them all if we’re going to try to do what we want to do this year,” Murray concluded.

The Huskies might have gained a little more confidence by winning a title when their top player, RJ Manke, wasn’t at his best. Manke, the No. 2-ranked college player in the nation, finished outside the top-five for the first time in 10 outings this season. At 2-over, he tied for 57th in the 143-man field.

“RJ has carried us all year and didn’t have the tournament he was hoping for,” Murray said. “But I hope this highlights to everyone that we have a lot of really good players.”

Paced by medalist Peyton Callens, Nevada maintained its hold on second place after turning in a final round 274 (-6) to finish 19-under 821 for the tournament, three strokes behind the Huskies.

Callens, who followed an opening-round 65 on Thursday with a 3-under 70 in Friday’s second round, began the day in third place tied with Cal’s Sampson Zheng and BYU’s Carson Lundell at 8-under 132. The junior from Langton, Ontario carded a final round 65 to finish at 13-under 197, earning a one-stroke win over UC Davis’ Lucas Carper.

Teeing off an hour before Callens, Carper held the clubhouse lead at 12-under until Callens rolled in a 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to secure his first collegiate victory.

“Coming into the week, we were just concentrating on playing well,” said Callens, who began his collegiate career at Texas A&M. “There were a lot of teams ranked higher than us so we knew we had to play well. We all played well as a team and I’m lucky I got the win.

“You have to drive it well here to win. If your off-line just a bit, the rough is really thick and the trees hand pretty low. If you hit it straight off the tee here and make some putts, you’ll do pretty good.”

It marks the second consecutive year a Nevada player has won the individual title at The Goodwin. In 2021, Sam Harned shared medalist honors with Blake Hathcoat of Saint Mary’s.

Zheng finished third at 11-under while SMU’s Noah Goodwin claimed fourth at 10-under. Oregon’s Eric Doyle turned in the low round of the tournament on Saturday with a 7-under 63 to climb 24 spots up the leaderboard into fifth place at 9-under 201.

Washington will return to action at the Western Intercollegiate, hosted by San Jose State and Pasatiempo Golf Course in Santa Cruz, Calf., April 11-13.

Washington Athletic Communications contributed to this report.