Stanford will be without two starters for its most important tournament of the season to date.
The Cardinal had planned on a lineup for the NCAA Albuquerque Regional that was bolstered by senior Henry Shimp, who was coming off a playoff loss at the Pac-12 Championship, and sophomore Barclay Brown, who just represented Great Britain and Ireland at the Walker Cup. However, both players will no longer tee it up in regionals.
Though Stanford could not specifically comment on individual players, Shimp and Brown were listed in the Nos. 1 and 2 spots in Stanford’s lineup, respectively, on Golfstat’s live scoring page as of Sunday morning and have since been removed. Prior to regionals, they had combined to miss just three events all season.
Ashwin Arasu, Jake Beber-Frankel and David Leede will also not travel with the team for regionals, though all three have played sparingly this season.
“Two members of the Stanford men’s golf program will not compete in the NCAA Albuquerque Regional due to COVID-19 testing and contact tracing protocols,” a school representative said in a statement to GolfChannel.com “Their status will be updated at a future date for NCAA Championships.”
Stanford policy still requires students to test twice per week, including student-athletes.
Stanford’s lineup will now include Michael Thorbjornsen, Ethan Ng, Karl Vilips and additions Nate Menon and David Snyder. Daulet Tuleubayev will be the substitute. Snyder and Tuleubayev were members of the 2019 NCAA Championship-winning lineup for the Cardinal.
The Albuquerque Regional is scheduled for Monday-Wednesday at the University of New Mexico’s Championship Course. The top five teams after 54 holes advance to the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk. Stanford, which is ranked 31st by Golfstat, is the No. 6 seed, behind Oklahoma, Arizona State, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and host New Mexico.