After one round at the NCAA West Regionals in Fresno, Calif., the Oregon men’s golf team is in the middle of a wild-west shootout, golf style.
The Ducks are in 10th place at the West Regionals, where the top 10 teams will advance to the NCAA Championships in Auburn, Ala., later this month, despite shooting only two-over par as a team.
Oregon leads California, Stanford and Oregon State, all tied for 11th, by a single stroke but trails UCLA, in ninth, by two. Only 10 strokes separate the No. 2 through 10 teams.
“We didn’t play at the level that we needed to,” Oregon head coach Steve Nosler said. “We didn’t play bad, but against this competition you just have to have good rounds.”
Some of the best teams in the country are bunched at the top of the leader board at the regionals.
No. 9 Brigham Young leads No. 8 Arizona by four strokes. The Cougars are 12 strokes under par. No. 6 Fresno State and No. 4 Arizona State are tied for third. Surprisingly, No. 21 Washington sits in fifth, tied with No. 11 UNLV.
Freshman Chris Carnahan and junior T.J. Duncan lead the Ducks at the all-important tournament. Both shot one-under 71s to finish tied for 24th, but are only three strokes out of first.
Senior co-captain Andrew Tredway also played well for Oregon. The Ashland native shot a one-over par 73 and was tied for 49th.
Tredway’s co-captain, senior Ryan Lavoie, shot a three-over 75. The last member of the team, Aaron Byers, shot a five-over 77.
Nosler doesn’t think the fact that Oregon has never played the Riverbend Golf Course is affecting his team.
“Except for Fresno State,” Nosler said, “nobody has really seen this course any more than we have.” The Riverbend Golf Course is relatively new.
The Cougars lead the regionals mostly because of the play of No. 34 Manuel Merizalde, a sophomore from Columbia, who, along with Parker McLachlin of UCLA, leads the tournament at five-under par.
On the other side of the fence, some top-ranked teams struggled in the first round. Pepperdine, in 18th, and Stanford, in 11th, are both having a tough time in Fresno.
Before the tournament, Nosler said “We need have all five guys playing well, so that if somebody does stumble a little bit coming in, we’ve got five guys playing all the way.”

After the first round at the regionals, Nosler’s words ring true. Instead of five players at even par, the Ducks have three players playing well, one playing average and one playing poorly.
BYU, on the other hand, has three players under par, as do Arizona, Fresno State and Arizona State. The Bruins, who hold down ninth place in front of Oregon, also has three players under par.
If Oregon finishes higher than fifth, it will be the first tournament since January that the Ducks do so.
“I have all the confidence in the world,” Nosler said, “that we’ll come out tomorrow and fire a good round, and put ourselves right back in the thick of it.”
The Ducks will play two more rounds of 18 holes each — one today and one Saturday.