Men's Golf | 4/3/2026 2:45:00 PM

Utah Tech wraps up the 2025-26 regular season this Monday and Tuesday at the UC Santa Barbara Gaucho Invitational. The two-day, 54-hole event will be played at the par-72, 7,071-yard Sandpiper Golf Club in Goleta, Calif. 
        In addition to the Trailblazers and the host Gauchos, the nine-team tournament field will comprise of Boise State, UC Riverside, Creighton, Denver, North Dakota, Utah State and Westmont. 
 
The five player lineup for Utah Tech will feature juniors Braden Anderson and Ashton McArthur, sophomore Frank Miao, and freshmen David Liechty and Joe Zhou. 

GOING "BIG" IN 2026: This past June 25, Utah Tech announced that it had accepted an invitation to join the Big Sky Conference beginning on July 1, 2026. 
        Starting in the 2026-27 season, 14 of the Trailblazers' 17 sports, including men's golf, will compete under the Big Sky Conference banner.

HEAD COACH BRAD SUTTERFIELD: Brad Sutterfield (BYU, 1994) is in his 14th season as head coach of the Utah Tech men's golf program. Last season, Sutterfield led the Trailblazers to seven top-eight showings in 10 team events, highlighted by a runner-up finish at last season's Colorado State Ram Masters Invitational (9/17-18/24), and a seventh place showing at the 2025 WAC Championships.
        In the 2018-19 campaign, Coach Sutterfield and the Trailblazers enjoyed arguably their most successful season in the program's four-year era, posting six top-five team finishes and 11 total top-10 showings in 12 total team events, highlighted by a wire-to-wire victory at the 2019 NCAA Division II Men's Golf South Central/West Regional Championships. Utah Tech also placed ninth-overall at the 2019 NCAA National Championships and recorded a runner-up finish in its debut at the RMAC Championships.
        In 2018, Sutterfield led Utah Tech to its third Pacific West Conference team title in four seasons, which earned him his second conference Coach of the Year award. The Trailblazers collected four tournament wins overall that season, along with seven-straight top-three team finishes and nine total top-10s in nine events overall.
        Under his direction, the program finished in the top-three overall in the PacWest in six seasons overall, including consecutive PacWest team titles in 2015 and 2016, and a runner-up finish in 2014, for which Sutterfield was named conference Coach of the Year. 
        Prior to his arrival at Utah Tech, Sutterfield, who played collegiately at BYU, played professional golf for 15 years as a member of the PGA Tour, European Tour, the Web.com Tour, Canadian Tour, Asian Tour and European Challenge Tour.
        Coach Sutterfield is joined on his staff by former Utah Tech standout player Spencer Wallace, who is in second season as an assistant coach, along with volunteer coach Marc Briggs.  

LAST TIME OUT: Highlighted by Liechty's second individual tournament win of the season, Utah Tech came away with a 10^th-place finish at the Seattle U Redhawk Invitational, which was played this past Monday and Tuesday at famed Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Park, Wash. 
        The Trailblazers got off to a great start on Monday morning, vaulting all the way up the leaderboard into second place at even par 288, four shots back of first round leader UC San Diego (-4; 284).
        Utah Tech battled the rain drops during its Monday afternoon round and combined to shoot 14-over 302, which dropped the Blazers into a tie for seventh at plus-14 590. The Trailblazers then closed with a 6-over 294 on Tuesday. 

TRAILBLAZERS AT A GLANCE: Bolstered by his record performance at the Seattle event earlier this week, Liechty leads all active Trailblazer players with a 71.52 scoring average through nine team events this season. The freshman has also carded a team-high 14 par or better rounds and posted three top-10 finishes overall, which includes his first collegiate individual victory at the CSUN Bill Cullum Invite in February.
        Meanwhile McArthur is second at 72.29 with 12 par or better rounds out of the 21 loops he has played, followed by Miao in third at 73.94 (six par-or-better rounds), Zhou in fourth at 77.39 (four par-or-better rounds), and Anderson in fifth at 77.67 (three par-or-better rounds). 

NEXT UP FOR THE TRAILBLAZERS: Utah Tech will vie for its first D-I conference title as the Trailblazers head to "The Lone Star State" for the 2026, and final, Western Athletic Conference Men's Golf Championships. The three-day, 54-hole championship tournament will be held April 27-29, at The Clubs of Stonebridge Ranch in McKinney, Texas.