When the competitors for this week’s Palmer Cup at Cherry Hills Country Club were asked to submit their clubhouse guest list, Broomfield’s Steve Ziegler originally listed 51 people.
“The coach said, ‘This is ridiculous,'” Ziegler recounted Monday after a practice round at Cherry Hills. “So my next list had nine people on it. I feel bad that I can’t include everybody, but they can still get in for free. This is going to be a gathering spot for a lot of family and friends this week.”
Such is life as the only Coloradan in the field for a major Colorado-based golf tournament. The Palmer Cup matches pit eight of the best American-born players in college golf against eight counterparts from Europe. The Ryder Cup-like competition begins Wednesday and runs through Friday, and the public can attend free of charge those three days.
As for Ziegler, he’ll be kept hopping this week. In fact, after his practice round on Monday, he was dealing with a term paper he has due at Stanford, where he’s a sophomore. Stanford doesn’t wrap up its term until June 10, but between last week’s NCAA Championships and this week’s Palmer Cup, Ziegler is missing two straight weeks of classes.
“It’s certainly been busy — busy but manageable,” said the two-time Colorado state high school champion. “You have to keep on top of things and be pro-active.”
The fact that Ziegler was chosen for the elite Palmer Cup tournament says something about the year it’s been fgolf-wise or the Legacy High School graduate. He won a college tournament for the first time — the USC Collegiate Invitational — and posted six top-11 finishes for the season. He was named to the All-Pac 10 first team and placed 30th individually at last week’s NCAA Finals. Golfweek has him ranked the 17th-best college player in the nation.
“I was very happy; it was a good year overall,” Ziegler said. “It was not only winning a tournament, but I put myself in position to win several times. Golf is a fickle game, so to put yourself in contention quite a bit is a good thing. I wanted to make that jump this year, but I know I can still take my game to another level.”
Matt Thurmond, who’s coaching the U.S. team this week, has seen Ziegler play quite a bit because they’re both in the Pac-10 Conference. Thurmond coaches at the University of Washington, and he’s been duly impressed by Ziegler’s first two seasons at Stanford.
“He was a good recruit, and this spring he took the next step up,” Thurmond said. “Stanford had a good player, Joseph Bramlett, go down (to injury), and Steve played like the No. 1 man. I watched him extra close because of this (the Palmer Cup selections), and he responded.”
Ironically, though, Thurmond and the selection committee were under the impression that Ziegler had previously played some at Cherry Hills, which might give him a bit of a leg up this week. But that turned out to be incorrect. Thurmond said he found out Sunday that Ziegler was playing Cherry Hills for the first time.
“I was invited out here a couple of times last year, but it just didn’t work out,” Ziegler said. “But it is an awesome course.”
While Ziegler and his U.S. teammates are together learning the finer points of Cherry Hills, he’s doing his best to provide a little local knowledge regarding the mile-high elevation, and how the greens and sand in Colorado may differ from the norm.
“I try to tell them a couple of little things, but they pick things up quickly on their own,” Ziegler said.
It’s little wonder why. Four of Ziegler’s U.S. teammates are ranked in the top 10 in the college ranks by either Golfweek or Golfstat: Morgan Hoffmann of Oklahoma State, Cameron Tringale of Georgia Tech, Mike Van Sickle of Marquette and Bud Cauley of Alabama. On the European side, Jorge Campillo of Indiana also falls into that category.
Suffice it to say that Ziegler is happy to find himself among such elite company this week.
“You definitely have a feeling out there that these are all top-ranked guys,” Ziegler said.
“I was ecstatic when I got the phone call” inviting him to play on the U.S. team, Ziegler added. “It was a far-distant goal of mine after I won at USC. I was real excited when I reached that goal.”
PALMER CUP NOTES: Arnold Palmer, who lent his name to this event and who won the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills, is scheduled to take part in pre-tournament festivities on Tuesday, including the opening ceremonies in the afternoon. “¦
The Palmer Cup schedule calls for Four-ball matches on Wednesday morning beginning at 7:30, with Foursomes on tap for that afternoon beginning at 1:30 p.m. On both Thursday and Friday, singles matches begin at 10 a.m.
The competition Wednesday through Friday is free and open to the public. “¦
Here are the rosters for the teams:
United States — Bud Cauley, Alabama; Erik Flores, UCLA; Morgan Hoffmann, Oklahoma State; Trent Leon, Oklahoma State; Adam Mitchell, Georgia; Cameron Tringale, Georgia Tech; Mike Van Sickle, Marquette; Steve Ziegler, Stanford.
Europe — Jorge Campillo, Indiana (Spain); Stephan Gross, Arizona State (Germany); Leonardo Motta, IULM Milan (Italy); Henrik Norlander, Augusta State (Sweden); Chris Paisley, Tennessee (England); Andrea Pavan, Texas A&M (Italy); Tim Sluiter, Southern California (The Netherlands); Robin Wingardh, Tennessee (Sweden).
