LA QUINTA, Calif. — Mark Weissman couldn’t help but notice the number of professional golfers in this year’s The American Express PGA Tour event who made their first impression in the Coachella Valley in the college tournament Weissman founded 23 years ago.
There was Jon Rahm, now a two-time American Express winner, who played in the Prestige at PGA West college tournament for Arizona State. Xander Schauffele, third in this year’s American Express, played for San Diego State. Sahith Theegala was a star for Pepperdine, Sam Burns played at LSU and Tom Hoge played at TCU, among others who were part of The American Express this year.
That’s what has Weissman so excited about the Prestige as he prepares for the tournament Feb. 20-23.
“It’s great to see who will be following the other players like Rahm and Schauffele to the PGA Tour,” said Weissman, the founder of the tournament that is hosted annually by UC Davis.
With a field of 24 teams from across the United States, the Prestige will again be played at the Greg Norman course at PGA West in La Quinta, with teams playing three 18-hole rounds. A separate individual tournament will again be played, this year at the Golf Club at Terra Lago in Indio.
With 24 teams of five players each set for the event, Weissman understands some concern about how everyone will finish each day at PGA West, where the Santa Rosa Mountains are close enough to cause shorter winter days when the sun drops behind the mountain ridges. But the number should work fine, he said.
“The coaches felt that because of the number of teams that want to come out here and generally with the great weather in February when it is cold in most other areas of the country still, plus going into the crucial part of the NCAA season, the spring season, that it was important to kind of open (the field) up to more teams,” Weissman said. “We did this last year and felt that it worked well to continue it this year.”
Early season competition
The field will be led by tournament host UC Davis and head coach Cy Williams and Stanford with head coach Conrad Ray. Stanford for years was a co-host of the event and still has input into the tournament. Some teams have been fixtures in the tournament like Pepperdine, TCU, LSU, Northwestern and Texas Tech. While those teams return, other teams will be coming to the desert for the first time.
“We have a pretty significant list of teams that would like to come out, and it is always a hard decision…
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