BYU freshman Kihei Akina tied for 8th in the race for medalist honors at the 2026 NCAA Men\u2019s Golf Championships on Monday at La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California.<\/p>\n
Akina, a teenager from Alpine who prepped at Lone Peak High, shot a 2-under 70 on the North Course in the fourth and final round and finished the tournament at -8 and in a tie with Lance Simpson of Tennessee.<\/p>\n
Akina made four birdies and two bogeys on Monday, a day after his BYU team was eliminated from the team competition and finished in 18th place. Akina played on because he was one of the top nine individuals not on an advancing team.<\/p>\n
Preston Stout of Oklahoma State finished as the medalist, posting a 72-hole total of 14-under. Top-ranked Auburn won the stroke-play portion of the tournament at -26 and moves on as the top seed for match play, which begins Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Akina \u201chas had an All-American type year,\u201d said retiring BYU coach Bruce Brockbank. \u201cTo have a scoring average like he\u2019s had this season is great for him, the golf team and BYU athletics. It has been a long time since we\u2019ve had a guy put up the performances he\u2019s been having.\u201d<\/p>\n
Akina posted rounds of 69-70-71-70 to carry the Cougars to a top 20 finish after they tied for 13th last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guys did a really nice job this year,\u201d Brockbank said in a school news release. \u201cThey were determined to accomplish some pretty high and lofty goals. Unfortunately we just gave away too many shots this week to make that first cut. In order to get into match play, you have to be a little more consistent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a great season with this team, and I am so glad my last season with these guys was spend with great players and even better kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seniors Simon Kwon (T72) and Tyson Shelley (T141) played their last rounds as Cougars, while junior Peter Kim (T127) has one more season of eligibility remaining. All three upperclassmen prepped at Salt Lake City\u2019s Skyline High.<\/p>\n
Akina was recently named to the 2026 PING All-Region West Team and will be one of the top players in all of college golf next year. Redshirt freshman Parker Bunn, the star of BYU\u2019s performance in the Athens Regional, placed tied for 109th. Another freshman, former Corner Canyon standout Jackson Mauss, was the substitute in Carlsbad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BYU freshman Kihei Akina tied for 8th in the race for medalist honors at the 2026 NCAA Men\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,3125,99],"class_list":["post-680138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-news-feed-local","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}