Cullowhee, N.C. – Back stateside after opening the spring semester south of the border in Mexico, the Western Carolina men's golf team returns to action on Monday and Tuesday at the 20th annual Wexford Intercollegiate, hosted by Francis Marion at the par-72, 6,884-yard Arnold Palmer Signature Course at Wexford in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Tournament action gets underway at 8:15 a.m. on Monday (Feb. 16) with a shotgun start for 36 continuous holes of play in the first and second rounds. The event concludes on Tuesday with the third round beginning with a shotgun start, also at 8:15 a.m.
Live scoring of the two-day, 54-hole event is available online through the
Scoreboard app, powered by Clippd.
In addition to the Catamounts and host FMU Patriots, the 18-team field includes two other Southern Conference teams, with Mercer and Samford in competition. Rounding out the field are golfers from the College of Charleston, Cleveland State, Cornell, Dayton, DePaul, East Carolina, Gardner-Webb, High Point, Presbyterian, Radford, Saint Joseph's, Temple, last year's runner-up USC Aiken, and the defending event champion, Xavier.
The Wexford Intercollegiate has been played annually every year since 2006, minus 2021 post COVID. USC Aiken has won the team title four times, most recently back in 2023. The event has seen a different team champion each of the past 10 seasons. WCU's JT Poston won the individual title back in 2015 with a 2-under par score.
Fresh off his second medalist honors of the 2025-26 season, junior transfer
Tyler Jones leads the Catamount scoring five into the Wexford. The two-time SoCon Men's Golfer of the Week currently leads the SoCon in stroke average, the lone golfer in the league with a sub-70 seasonal average at 69.87 through 15 rounds.
Jones is flanked by junior
Jace Butcher, 13th in the SoCon with a scoring mark of 72.47 to date, and senior
Ivan Ninkovic as the No. 3 seed, though he boasts the fourth-best average in the SoCon at 70.87.
Rounding out WCU's scoring five through team qualifying are junior
Andrew Korytoski (74.53) and freshman
Connor Williams (75.83) in the No. 4 and No. 5 positions, respectively. Korytoski has the second-best individual finish for the Catamounts this year with a third-place tie at the Nemacolin Collegiate Invitational in the fall.
Western Carolina returns to the Wexford Intercollegiate for the first time since 2022, when the Catamounts came home tied for ninth. None of the current WCU players on the roster were a part of that squad that posted the Top 10 finish.
Following play at the Wexford Intercollegiate, Catamount men's golf returns to St. Simons Island, Ga., to host The Peoples Golf Championship at Sea Palms, March 12-14. The event is again title-sponsored by Peoples Golf and The Peoples Clubs, based out of Swain County, NC, and founded by Will Peoples, CEO, a 2008 WCU graduate.
Keep track of everything related to Catamount men's golf and WCU Athletics through its social media outlets on Facebook (fb.com/catamountsports), Instagram (@wcu_catamounts), and Twitter (@catamounts, @CatamountMGolf).
