Oklahoma golf: Sooner men ranked No. 1 entering spring season
By Chip Rouse
The men’s Oklahoma golf team is the countries No. 1 team as it gets set to open the spring portion of its season.
Previously No. 2, the Sooners but advanced to the top spot this week in both the Bushnell Golfweek Coaches Poll and the Golfweek Sagarin rankings. Oklahoma regains the No. 1 ranking for the first time since last October, when the Sooner squad finished second at the East Lake Cup in Atlanta.
The Sooners tee it up for the spring season with three All-Americans who represented Team USA at the Arnold Palmer Cup in December. The Palmer Cup is a team competition between the United States and a team of amateur international players from the rest of the world.
Oklahoma enters the spring with a deep squad of top-ranked players. The Sooner squad features six golfers ranked among the top 30 in the country and three in the top 10: No. 2 Quade Cummins, No. 3 Patrick Welch and No. 9 Logan McAllister. Cummins is a redshirt senior and Welch and McAllister are both juniors.
The Sooners were scheduled to begin their spring season this weekend at the All-American Intercollegiate Tournament in Houston, but the event has been cancelled because of an expected winter storm in the region. The three-day, 54-hole tournament was also to include No. 14 Texas
A&M and No. 10 Texas, No. 21 Baylor and No. 22 Oklahoma State from the Big 12.
The OU men’s team is the only team in the country that has appeared in each of the last four NCAA match-play championships. The match-play portion of the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship is equivalent to the quarterfinals of any NCAA championship.