Colorado University Athletics
Vanderbilt's Legends Club sports both North and South Courses.
Photo by: CUBuffs.com
Golfers Ranked 27th; Head To Nashville This Weekend
April 02, 2025 | Men's Golf
Highest Ranking In Eight Years
BOULDER — In the latest Scoreboard national men's golf rankings released Wednesday morning, the University of Colorado men's golf team came in at 27th, its highest in eight years. The Buffaloes had been ranked 32nd in the previous week's listing.
This is the highest CU has been ranked during the spring season since rising to No. 18 in both the GolfStat and Golfweek rankings heading into April in 2017; Colorado finished No. 32 in the nation that season. Otherwise, you have to go back to mid-April back in the 2003-04 season, when CU climbed to No. 23 after finishing second in Purdue's Boilermaker Invitational. The Buffaloes eventually finished that year 34th in the rankings.
Colorado is fresh off a second place finish in Stanford's "The Goodwin," where only No. 15 UCLA bested the Buffaloes; otherwise, the Buffs defeated 11 teams ranked in the nation's top 50 and 16 in the top 75. The Buffaloes have held their own against the nation's top teams this season: CU has a 10-4-1 record against those teams ahead of it in Wednesday's rankings, 34-10-2 versus the current top 50 and 49-11-2 against the latest top 75.
Coach Roy Edwards' team is turning right around and headed east to Tennessee late Tuesday to participate in Vanderbilt's 23rd Annual Mason Rudolph Championship for the first time. The 54-hole event runs from Friday through Sunday, with 18 holes of play each day, a break from the usual 36/18 format for smaller fields (14 teams will be competing).
This will be just the second time the Buffaloes will play in an event in state of Tennessee; CU's only previous appearance in the Volunteer State was in the 1955 NCAA Championships. Edwards spent the 2001-02 season as the assistant coach for both the men's and women's teams, and he's quite familiar with the Nashville area; in fact, he is taking the team to the Grand Old Opry on Wednesday evening after practice.
The Commodores host its annual event at its Vanderbilt Legends South Course, a 7,112-yard, par-71 layout in Franklin, about 15 miles south of campus. The Bob Cupp and Tom Kite designed course opened in 1992 and features undulated greens with small lakes and streams throughout. The tournament is named for the late Mason Rudolph, a Clarksville, Tenn. Native who won five times on the PGA Tour, including making a remarkable 52 straight cuts at one point.
"This is a quick turnaround from Stanford, but it should be good since we didn't miss any classes last week (it was CU's spring break)," Edwards said. "We're excited to get to Nashville as this is a new tournament for us and is another great field. A really good opportunity to play on Bermuda (grasses), which will be good prep for the Big 12 Championship at Southern Hills, who has Bermuda fairways and rough. The guys have played on it a lot so it shouldn't be too much of an adjustment."
"Personally, I am excited to take the team to play in the Mason Rudolph," he continued. "When I was at Vanderbilt, we started it for the first time and I got to know Mason really well as we were all part of the coaching staff. We played quite a bit of golf together and he was wonderful to me. He is a legendary figure in the game of golf. My time at Vanderbilt was right when Vanderbilt acquired the Legends Club and the dawning of the world-class golf program that now exists there. It was special to be there to help get that foundation started with the great players and head coaches we had there.
"The first Mason Rudolph was held five days after 9/11 in 2001," Edwards added. "I was in charge of the tournament and we actually hosted men's and women's events concurrently on the two courses at Legends Club. Several teams dropped out that week, but we were able to add a few others we didn't know would be coming. It came down to who thought they could make their previously scheduled events due to the shutdown of commercial flights. The coaches and players made the best of an obviously tragic event and it created some great memories and camaraderie amongst the players and coaches."
CU will be represented by three seniors, Justin Biwer, Jack Holland and Dylan McDermott, junior Hunter Swanson and sophomores Ty Holbrook and Brandon Knight; Holbrook paced CU at Stanford with a 1-under par, 12th place finish. Knight will play as an individual, his score won't count toward the Buffs' team total.
In addition to host and No. 18 Vanderbilt and the No. 27 Buffaloes, the 14-team field includes No. 2 Auburn, No. 3 Ole Miss, No. 31 Mississippi State, No. 43 Charlotte and No. 72 Princeton in the top 75, along with Ball State, Kentucky, Liberty, Middle Tennessee State, Penn State, Toledo and Wisconsin.
Tee times in 11-minute intervals start at 7:00 a.m. MDT on Friday and Saturday, and 6:30 a.m. on Sunday. The weather could be a factor, as even though temperatures are expected to reach the mid-80s the first two days (then in the mid-60s Sunday), there is a 70 percent chance of rain in the morning with thunderstorms in the afternoon.
NOTES: Colorado owns a 137-14-2 record against Division I competition thus far this season, leading the nation in wins and is second in percentage (90.2) behind top ranked Texas … The 137 wins are already the sixth-most in school history (the 1980-81 team was 176-77-3), and the percentage is well above the previous best in 2017-18 (133-57-5, 69.5) … There are 306 Division I men's golf programs in all, the top 75-80 of which are considered the deepest of all college sports … Geography snapshot: The Legends Course fluctuates between 633 and 705 feet in elevation, placing it smack in the middle of CU's nine events this season – tournaments in Albuquerque, Boulder, Fort Collins and Pullman were higher, while those in Hockley (Texas), Palm Desert, San Diego, Palo Alto and Maui were lower … Host Vanderbilt has won the event the last five seasons, finishing 30-under par in besting Ole Miss by 18 strokes last April, and seven of the last eight (Florida won in 2017) … The first 12 Mason Rudolph Championships were held in the fall, moving to the spring in 2013 … Vanderbilt has won its event 10 times, with only Alabama and Middle Tennessee State winning it more than once (twice each); the furthest team west to have won was the University of Memphis in 2010 … The winning team has been under par all but twice, with Vanderbilt's 46-under performance in 2022 (266-270-270—806) the all-time best; the medalist has always been under par, topped by Georgia State's Ty Harris in 2004 (-18; 63-68-64—195) with two others 17-under … The last time CU played in an event this far east of Interstate 25 was in Notre Dame's Fighting Irish Invitational in the 2022-23 season opener.
This is the highest CU has been ranked during the spring season since rising to No. 18 in both the GolfStat and Golfweek rankings heading into April in 2017; Colorado finished No. 32 in the nation that season. Otherwise, you have to go back to mid-April back in the 2003-04 season, when CU climbed to No. 23 after finishing second in Purdue's Boilermaker Invitational. The Buffaloes eventually finished that year 34th in the rankings.
Colorado is fresh off a second place finish in Stanford's "The Goodwin," where only No. 15 UCLA bested the Buffaloes; otherwise, the Buffs defeated 11 teams ranked in the nation's top 50 and 16 in the top 75. The Buffaloes have held their own against the nation's top teams this season: CU has a 10-4-1 record against those teams ahead of it in Wednesday's rankings, 34-10-2 versus the current top 50 and 49-11-2 against the latest top 75.
Coach Roy Edwards' team is turning right around and headed east to Tennessee late Tuesday to participate in Vanderbilt's 23rd Annual Mason Rudolph Championship for the first time. The 54-hole event runs from Friday through Sunday, with 18 holes of play each day, a break from the usual 36/18 format for smaller fields (14 teams will be competing).
This will be just the second time the Buffaloes will play in an event in state of Tennessee; CU's only previous appearance in the Volunteer State was in the 1955 NCAA Championships. Edwards spent the 2001-02 season as the assistant coach for both the men's and women's teams, and he's quite familiar with the Nashville area; in fact, he is taking the team to the Grand Old Opry on Wednesday evening after practice.
The Commodores host its annual event at its Vanderbilt Legends South Course, a 7,112-yard, par-71 layout in Franklin, about 15 miles south of campus. The Bob Cupp and Tom Kite designed course opened in 1992 and features undulated greens with small lakes and streams throughout. The tournament is named for the late Mason Rudolph, a Clarksville, Tenn. Native who won five times on the PGA Tour, including making a remarkable 52 straight cuts at one point.
"This is a quick turnaround from Stanford, but it should be good since we didn't miss any classes last week (it was CU's spring break)," Edwards said. "We're excited to get to Nashville as this is a new tournament for us and is another great field. A really good opportunity to play on Bermuda (grasses), which will be good prep for the Big 12 Championship at Southern Hills, who has Bermuda fairways and rough. The guys have played on it a lot so it shouldn't be too much of an adjustment."
"Personally, I am excited to take the team to play in the Mason Rudolph," he continued. "When I was at Vanderbilt, we started it for the first time and I got to know Mason really well as we were all part of the coaching staff. We played quite a bit of golf together and he was wonderful to me. He is a legendary figure in the game of golf. My time at Vanderbilt was right when Vanderbilt acquired the Legends Club and the dawning of the world-class golf program that now exists there. It was special to be there to help get that foundation started with the great players and head coaches we had there.
"The first Mason Rudolph was held five days after 9/11 in 2001," Edwards added. "I was in charge of the tournament and we actually hosted men's and women's events concurrently on the two courses at Legends Club. Several teams dropped out that week, but we were able to add a few others we didn't know would be coming. It came down to who thought they could make their previously scheduled events due to the shutdown of commercial flights. The coaches and players made the best of an obviously tragic event and it created some great memories and camaraderie amongst the players and coaches."
CU will be represented by three seniors, Justin Biwer, Jack Holland and Dylan McDermott, junior Hunter Swanson and sophomores Ty Holbrook and Brandon Knight; Holbrook paced CU at Stanford with a 1-under par, 12th place finish. Knight will play as an individual, his score won't count toward the Buffs' team total.
In addition to host and No. 18 Vanderbilt and the No. 27 Buffaloes, the 14-team field includes No. 2 Auburn, No. 3 Ole Miss, No. 31 Mississippi State, No. 43 Charlotte and No. 72 Princeton in the top 75, along with Ball State, Kentucky, Liberty, Middle Tennessee State, Penn State, Toledo and Wisconsin.
Tee times in 11-minute intervals start at 7:00 a.m. MDT on Friday and Saturday, and 6:30 a.m. on Sunday. The weather could be a factor, as even though temperatures are expected to reach the mid-80s the first two days (then in the mid-60s Sunday), there is a 70 percent chance of rain in the morning with thunderstorms in the afternoon.
NOTES: Colorado owns a 137-14-2 record against Division I competition thus far this season, leading the nation in wins and is second in percentage (90.2) behind top ranked Texas … The 137 wins are already the sixth-most in school history (the 1980-81 team was 176-77-3), and the percentage is well above the previous best in 2017-18 (133-57-5, 69.5) … There are 306 Division I men's golf programs in all, the top 75-80 of which are considered the deepest of all college sports … Geography snapshot: The Legends Course fluctuates between 633 and 705 feet in elevation, placing it smack in the middle of CU's nine events this season – tournaments in Albuquerque, Boulder, Fort Collins and Pullman were higher, while those in Hockley (Texas), Palm Desert, San Diego, Palo Alto and Maui were lower … Host Vanderbilt has won the event the last five seasons, finishing 30-under par in besting Ole Miss by 18 strokes last April, and seven of the last eight (Florida won in 2017) … The first 12 Mason Rudolph Championships were held in the fall, moving to the spring in 2013 … Vanderbilt has won its event 10 times, with only Alabama and Middle Tennessee State winning it more than once (twice each); the furthest team west to have won was the University of Memphis in 2010 … The winning team has been under par all but twice, with Vanderbilt's 46-under performance in 2022 (266-270-270—806) the all-time best; the medalist has always been under par, topped by Georgia State's Ty Harris in 2004 (-18; 63-68-64—195) with two others 17-under … The last time CU played in an event this far east of Interstate 25 was in Notre Dame's Fighting Irish Invitational in the 2022-23 season opener.
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