SAN ANTONIO — The UTSA men’s golf team will tee off the season this Saturday-Monday, Sept. 9-11, by hosting the Valero Texas Collegiate at TPC San Antonio. Admission is free.
The Roadrunners will welcome 11 of the top collegiate teams to the Alamo City for the 54-hole, stroke-play event at the Oaks Course (par 72/7,050 yards). UTSA will line up against Baylor, FGCU, Georgia, Georgia Southern, Liberty, Louisville, Oklahoma, LSU, TCU, Vanderbilt and Virginia.
Live scoring will be available at Golfstat.com.
The field will play 18 holes each day with tee times starting at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday and 8 a.m. on Monday.
The individual medalist will earn an exemption into the PGA TOUR’s 2024 Valero Texas Open, which is played annually on the same course.
UTSA is entering its second season under the direction of head coach Matt Wernecke and first year as a member of the American Athletic Conference. The Roadrunners welcome back four veterans from last year’s squad including seniors Hunter Bott and David Harrison.
Bott, a native of Montgomery, Texas, earned third-team all-conference honors in 2022-23 after leading the squad with a 73.41 stroke average.
Harrison, a product of Byron Nelson High School in the Metroplex, posted a 74.19 stroke average and a pair of top-20 finishes.
Also returning are junior Jack Wehman, an Austin native who logged a 74.41 scoring average last season, and sophomore Brayden Bare, a Waco Midway High School product who landed on the 2023 Conference USA All-Freshman Team.
Five newcomers have joined the roster, including a pair of senior transfers in Christian Rodriguez and Bryson Thurston.
Rodriguez joins the Roadrunners after earning honorable mention All-America accolades the last two seasons at Southwestern University, an NCAA Division III program in Georgetown, Texas.
Thurston was an all-region and first-team all-conference performer at Le Tourneau, a D-III school in Longview, Texas.
Walker Franklin transferred to UTSA from Louisville, where he registered a 73.22 stroke average in 2021-22 following a prep career that saw him named Colorado High School Player of the Year twice during his time at Prospect Ridge Academy in Erie.
Freshmen Tyler Blackwell and Brock Blais round out the roster.
Blackwell was a state qualifier as a senior at Hill Country Christian School in Austin after earning all-district honors twice at Vandegrift High School, where he also played as a freshman under Wernecke.
Blais, a native of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, captured the Florida Class 2A State Championship and was named Florida Mr. Golf and the 2022-23 USA TODAY High School Sports Awards Florida Boys Golfer of the Year as a senior. He qualified for the U.S. Amateur earlier this summer.
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