Greg Hansen: Cats make themselves at home with tournament victory, and that's just the beginning

Across 34 years as Arizona’s golf coach, Hall of Famer Rick LaRose estimates he presented 33 different scenarios to build a practice facility and clubhouse commensurate with the school’s status as one of the NCAA’s elite golf programs.

Yet the only man to ever coach NCAA men’s and women’s teams to NCAA championships went 0 for 33.

Over the years, the Wildcats moved their esteemed Arizona Intercollegiate tournament from Tucson Country Club to Oro Valley Country Club to the Randolph Golf Complex to Arizona National to the Sewailo Golf Club and, this week, back to the TCC.

There was no home sweet home, nothing to compare to the recruits-enticing golf complexes built by Top 25 rivals Arizona State and Stanford.

The Wildcats’ lodged for a few years at faraway Arizona National and most recently at the remote Sewailo golf complex adjacent to Casino del Sol. As college sports’ arm’s race accelerated, even low-level Oregon State and Washington State built permanent golf facilities far superior to those of the on-the-move Wildcats.

That is about to change.

When coach Jim Anderson’s Wildcats won a nerve-wracking, two-day Arizona Intercollegiate by one stroke Tuesday at TCC, it was something of a housewarming before the house is built.

Architectural plans and fund-raising efforts are not yet complete, but it’s expected that Anderson’s men’s team and Laura Ianello’s UA women’s team will be able to move into a $12 million practice compound and clubhouse adjacent to the TCC’s driving range in the summer of 2023.

It will be a direct answer to ASU’s state-of-the-game complex built at Phoenix’s Papago Golf Club in 2018, a project driven both by Sun Devil alumnus Phil Mickelson and the influential Phoenix Thunderbirds, operators of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.

And to think the TCC was hiding in plain sight all these years.

Inspired by a group of Tucson businessmen 75 years ago, the TCC opened at what was the Rancho del Sambra. So much has changed. A group of 30 businessmen — prominent Tucson names such as O’Rielly, Mansfield, Boice, Drachman and Steinfeld — raised $220,000 for construction of the TCC course. Now a first-level college golf complex costs about 50 times that.

LaRose, now retired but a regular golfer at the TCC, once had a streak of being ranked in the top three for eight consecutive seasons. He believes it is imperative for Arizona to join the arms race to be able to recruit successfully from golf’s elite class.

That elite-class component was easily seen Tuesday at TCC: Ex-Wildcat Eric Meeks, the 1988 U.S. Amateur champion walked the course to watch his son, Loyola Marymount senior Cameron Meeks, play in the Arizona Intercollegiate. Cameron finished 11th.

In ’88, Meeks, then an Arizona junior, walked TCC turf as LaRose’s Wildcats won the Arizona Intercollegiate. Four years later ASU’s Mickelson finished tied for first at the Arizona Intercollegiate, also at TCC. In 1996, Stanford’s Tiger Woods finished second, six strokes behind Arizona All-American Ted Purdy.

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Those UA teams had no true headquarters; LaRose’s powerhouse teams jumped all over Southern Arizona to play and practice. Their locker room, as with the UA’s three-time NCAA women’s championship program, was a small clubhouse at McKale Center.

Somehow Arizona moved on and excelled. Ianello’s team won the 2018 national championship and finished tied for third in 2019 and 2021.

Anderson, in his 10th season as Arizona’s men’s golf coach, has been about as successful as possible in an era when the Utah Utes, for example, just opened a $3 million indoor golf practice facility. Now Anderson will be able to recruit to a golf facility that will rank with any in the country.

Last spring, Anderson coached Arizona to its first men’s Pac-12 championship since 2004. He is replacing Pac-12 individual champion Brad Reeves and Salpointe Catholic grad Trevor Werbylo, who went on to finish No. 1 on the Forme Tour, the PGA Tour’s equivalent of Double-A baseball.

So far, so good.

On Tuesday, the Wildcats not only needed stellar play from sophomore Christian Banke, the overall champion at 14-under par, and senior Chase Sienkiewicz, who finished sixth overall, but also a late gift from the golf gods.

As New Mexico and No. 5 Arkansas threatened to overtake Arizona, UA sophomore Sam Sommerhauser’s tee shot at the 14th hole flew right of the fairway into a thick group of trees. From about 350 yards away, it looked like a potential double-bogey.

Anderson drove a golf cart to the 14th green and asked if anyone had seen Sommerhauser’s ball. A fan pointed to a spot near the front of the green.

“It hit the tree and bounced into the middle of the fairway,” the man said.

Anderson shook his head and smiled broadly.

“Some days, huh?” he said.

Sommerhauser was able to save par.

An hour later, Banke clinched the Wildcats’ fifth straight Arizona Intercollegiate championship by getting a par at his 18th hole. In 41 years of the Arizona Intercollegiate, only seven Wildcats have been able to win the individual championship — future PGA Tour pros Robert Gamez, Ted Purdy and Ricky Barnes, and All-Pac-12 golfers Henry Liaw, Chris Nallen, Brian Prouty and Brad Reeves.

Banke, who shot a 66, stepped into that special class on Tuesday. The UA golf programs will soon take a special step, too — into their long-awaited $12 million complex.