Hot Cowboys seek Big 12 Championship at Southern Hills, public welcome
The red-hot Oklahoma State golf team will tee off in search of 12th Big 12 Championship title Tuesday when the 72-hole event kicks off at historic Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa.
The 16 teams in the conference will play 72 holes, including 36 Tuesday and 18 Wednesday and Thursday. The event is open to the public at no charge with parking on site.
OSU has won 56 league titles with 49 individual championships since the program was founded in 1947. The third-ranked Cowboys come into the event having won their last two events, four overall and have finished in the top three in their last eight starts.
One opponent not standing in their way this year is Oklahoma, which this week will be competing in the Southeastern Conference Championship in St. Simon’s Island, Ga. Texas, the other Big 12 defector, currently has the nation’s top-ranked team. New to the Big 12 competition are Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and BYU.
ASU is No. 5, Utah 14, Arizona 20 and BYU 26 in the latest coaches poll.
Big 12 Facts and Figures
Venue: Southern Hills (Par 71 · 7,481 Yards) · Tulsa, Oklahoma
Dates:Â April 22-24
Video: ESPN+ (Thursday — 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.)Â
Talent: Ryan Burr, Carl Paulson
Live Stats:Â scoreboard.clippd.com
The OSU Lineup
• The Cowboys will start sophomores Ethan Fang, Preston Stout, Eric Lee and Gaven Lane as well as freshman Filip Fahlberg-Johnsson. Junior John Wild will serve as the squad’s substitute.
• Fang started his Cowboy career with a run of seven consecutive top 10s and added his eighth at the Mountaineer Invitational where he matched his best finish of the year with a tie for third place.
• Stout has a run of top 10s in five of his last six starts. He has finished third on three occasions during that stretch and shared first place at the Cabo Collegiate.
• Lee is coming off his first victory as a Cowboy and the second of his career with his eight-shot win at the Mountaineer Invitational. He has finished in the top 10 in five of his last six starts.
• Lane is coming off his best finish of the year after tying for third place at the Mountaineer Invitational. He has finished in the top five in two of his last three starts and has three top 10s on the year.
• Falhberg-Johnsson has a pair of top 10s, including a tie for first place at the Jackson T. Stephens Cup last fall.
• Wild finished fourth earlier this season at The Clerico and is coming off his best finish of the spring at the Mountaineer Invitational where he tied for 13th place.
• The Cowboys will be the tournament’s No. 1 seed and will be grouped with second-seeded Arizona State, No. 3 Utah and No. 4 Arizona. The three teams will get their first round underway at 7:30 a.m. (CST) on the 1st tee on Tuesday. Play will be continuous for the second round.
• Results will be available at scoreboard.clippd.com. The final round will be streamed on ESPN+.
OSU At The Big 12 Championship
• The Cowboys have 11 Big 12 crowns to their credit. OSU won three of the first four tournaments, finishing atop the leaderboard in 1997, 1998 and 2000. The Cowboys’ next league title came in 2005 before reeling off five-straight victories from 2007-2011. OSU claimed No. 10 in 2019 in the first-ever Big 12 Championship contested at The Greenbrier before repeating in 2021 with a one-shot victory at Prairie Dunes.
• In addition to its 56 overall conference titles, OSU has 11 runner-up finishes, four third-place showings, a pair of fourth-place finishes, three fifth-place finishes and has finished sixth once.
• OSU has produced the event’s individual medalist on 11 occasions with Leif Westerberg (1997), Charles Howell (2000), Anders Hultman (2002), Hunter Mahan (2003), Pablo Martin (2007), Rickie Fowler (2008), Morgan Hoffmann (2009, 2011), Stratton Nolen (2016) and Kristoffer Ventura (2018) all taking top honors. Last year, Preston Stout became the most recent Cowboy champion, holing a 30-foot birdie putt on the final hole at Whispering Pines to join the list.
• On four occasions in Big 12 play, the Cowboys have produced the medalist and runner-up with Charles Howell and Edward Loar going 1-2 in 2000 followed by Pablo Martin and Ryan Posey in 2007, Rickie Fowler and Kevin Tway in 2008 and Morgan Hoffmann and Tway in 2011.
• Preston Stout will look to become the second Cowboy to win multiple Big 12 titles. Morgan Hoffmann was medalist in 2009 and 2011.
OSU at Southern Hills
• The first Big 12 Championship held at Southern Hills took place in 2003 where Hunter Mahan rolled to a 13-shot victory.Â
• The Cowboys finished runner-up at the historic venue in 2003, were fourth in 2006 before going on to win the NCAA title, fifth in 2015 and runner-up in 2018 before going on to win the national championship that year as well.
• Kristoffer Ventura won his Big 12 individual title in 2018 at Southern Hills.