The Sahalee Players Championship (SPC) will once again be held at Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Wash. The premier collegiate event kicks off the 2024-2025 college golf season by hosting 13 elite men’s college golf teams, including 2024 NCAA Champions, the University of Florida.
The two-day 54-hole event will be held Sept. 7-8, with 36 holes being played the first day, followed by 18 holes the second day.
The event is being hosted by the University of Washington, whose men’s golf team is ranked No. 13 in the U.S.
Admission and parking for the event are free. Spectators can park at nearby Eastlake High School, and complimentary shuttles will run every 30 minutes.
Click here for volunteer opportunities at the championship.
For more information about the SPC, visit GoHuskies.com/feature/SPC
Preston Summerhays is the defending champion and will be playing in this year’s event. He is currently the No. 6-ranked amateur in the world, according to WAGR, and is now a senior on the Arizona State University golf team. With his win last year, he earned an exemption into the Fortinet Championship and made the cut for that PGA Tour event held in Napa, Calif. Summerhays is the nephew of Daniel Summerhays, who won the Sahalee Players Championship in 2007 when it was an elite amateur championship.
Arizona State won the 2024 Pac-12 Championship, and are the No. 4-ranked team in the U.S. They are coached by former UW head coach Matt Thurmond.
Also teeing it up at Sahalee for Arizona State is senior Josele Ballester, who last week won the U.S. Amateur.
In last year’s championship, Summerhays defeated Max Herendeen of Bellevue, Wash. in a playoff. Only three players broke par in last year’s event. Herendeen is now a sophomore playing for the University of Illinois.
Washington finished third in last year’s event. The golf team has graduated four starters from that team which spent most of last year ranked inside the top 10, so they will start this year with a younger roster.
Another notable player this year is Ethan Fang, a sophomore at Oklahoma State. Fang will be coming off a strong showing at the U.S. Amateur, where he survived a playoff just to make it into the match-play bracket as the No. 64 seed, and then proceeded to take down the No. 1 seed, Jimmy Ellis, in the round of 64, and advanced all the way to the quarterfinals before bowing out.
First held in 1992, the Sahalee Players Championship (SPC) was created to bring the best male amateur golfers in the world to compete at Sahalee on an annual basis.
Until 2019, Sahalee hosted the SPC as an independently run elite amateur tournament. The fields of players were amazing, crowning champions who have gone on to great things in the game, including Sahith Theegala, Peter Uihlein, Nick Taylor, Daniel Summerhays, Kyle Stanley, Ryan Moore, Aaron Oberholser and Jason Gore. Other competitors included some of today’s top tour players, including Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Kurt Kitayama, Ryan Fox, and Min Woo Lee.
Following the hiatus caused by the pandemic, Sahalee partnered with the UW to transform the SPC into a top-tier collegiate event.
About Sahalee Country Club
Located in Sammamish, Wash., Sahalee Country Club offers 27-holes of world-class golf for all levels of golfers. Sahalee, well-known for its championship course pedigree, recently hosted the 2024 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. The club added this championship to its rich history of hosting major championship golf which includes the 1998 PGA Championship, 2002 WGC-NEC Invitational, 2010 U.S. Senior Open and the 2016 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. Sahalee, a Platinum Club of America, is recognized as one of the top 150 private country clubs in the U.S. Visit sahalee.com for more information.
