Johnnie Clark wins Thunderbird Collegiate in Tempe

1 week ago

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PHOENIX — The stars aligned in two major ways for Johnnie Clark at the 53rd ASU Thunderbird Collegiate.

The first was the absence of 2025 champion Pongsapak “Fifa” Laopadkee, an Arizona State junior who earned an invitation to the Masters after winning the 2025 Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in Dubai last October.

Second, Clark was basically playing in his backyard at the Papago Golf Club, the tournament venue. The New Mexico standout, who transferred from Oklahoma State, played high school golf at Red Mountain High School in his hometown of Mesa and grew up taking lessons at Papago.

Clark maneuvered the familiar course with confidence, especially on the greens. He fired a final round 66 to finish at 14-under, three strokes ahead of his closest pursuer, comfortably earning his first collegiate tournament win.

“I’ve played this course at least 50 times at this point. I worked with a coach here and so I would come out and play quite a bit,” Clark said. “That course knowledge comes in a lot of help.”

Although he said the course has changed slightly over the years, Clark identified his prior experience on the putting surfaces as key, allowing him to calculate his approach shots for comfortable putts. His previous experience in Stillwater, Oklahoma also prepared him for the windy conditions the field faced during the weekend.

“I lived in Oklahoma for two years, and the wind blows like hell there,” Clark said. “I got used to it, and it just didn’t really affect me. It feels normal at this point.”

Being only 20 minutes from his hometown, Clark celebrated with friends and family before returning to New Mexico to prepare for the Mountain West Conference championship in Tucson.

Clark’s performance was key in the No. 20 ranked Lobos’ push to post their first team win of the season, beating the field by four shots at 32 under par. The No. 9 ranked Sun Devils finished second at 28 under with No. 28 Long Beach State close behind at 27 under.

Although Arizona State had its three-year win streak in the event broken, promising rounds from freshman Boston Bracken and junior Connor Williams offered hope that the Sun Devils could get hot at the right time.

“Boston is having a great week, which is exactly what we needed to see out of him. Connor is our leader, and he had another solid week,” Arizona State associate head coach Thomas Sutton said. “We are kind of forming our team where we want it to be going into the postseason.”

Bracken started off hot, claiming the tournament single-round low after posting a bogey-free 7-under in the first round. However, he finished the tournament 11-under and tied for second with Alejandro de Castro Piera from Long Beach State after scoring 1-over in round two.

“First round, I didn’t make any mistakes, really, and then kind of stumbled coming in on the last nine after the longer 36-hole day,” Bracken said. “But I stayed positive today after a double on the first hole and finished pretty nice.”

Bracken edged his teammate Williams by one stroke after hitting his sand wedge from 108 yards out on No. 18 to within two feet of the cup for a tap-in birdie. It marked the second top-10 finish in his young college career.

Arizona State junior Connor Williams hits his approach shot after being forced to take a drop and scramble from the desert waste on the par-4 16th hole at Papago Golf Club during play on Saturday at the 53rd ASU Thunderbird Collegiate. (Photo by Matthew Pearce/Cronkite News)

Williams had the save of the tournament during the third round after hitting his ball into the desert waste area left of the fairway on the 442-yard par-4 16th. He had to take a drop, hit the ball onto the green and made the long putt to save par – a crucial recovery on the way to a final-round of 4-under-par 68 that helped him get to 10-under for the tournament.

“I was in the bush and kind of had this one area where I could drop to have a shot,” Williams said. “I dropped it on this little piece of grass in the desert, which gave me a shot to the green and hit a solid one. It was nice to make that 20-plus-foot (putt) dead center.”

With the postseason right around the corner, teams now must shrink rosters from eight players to six and hope their best golf is ahead of them.

Arizona State competes at the Big 12 Conference Championships at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson, Kansas from April 27-29. From there, teams compete in the NCAA Regionals, then individuals and teams will be invited to the NCAA Championship at Omni La Costa in Carlsbad, California from May 29-June 3 to crown the 2026 national champions.