How to Follow BYU at the 2026 Preserve Golf Club Collegiate

BYU men’s golf closes its fall season Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 26-27, at The Preserve Golf Club Collegiate in Carmel Valley, California. There is no announced television stream or radio broadcast. The official Clippd scoreboard is the place to follow team totals, individual cards and tee times once BYU’s entries appear.

The timing needs one explanation. BYU’s schedule lists an 8 a.m. Mountain event start Monday. The tournament host lists first-round tee times from 7:30 to 8:50 a.m. Pacific, which converts to 8:30 to 9:50 a.m. Mountain. BYU’s broad listing and the host’s tee window do not match exactly, and Clippd had not posted Cougar players or pairings as of Saturday afternoon. Treat 8 a.m. as the scoreboard-opening target, then use the live tee sheet for each golfer’s actual start.

This is a 54-hole stroke-play event, with 36 holes scheduled Monday and the final 18 Tuesday. Five golfers play for each team and the lowest four cards count in every round. That last sentence is the tournament: a fifth score can disappear from the team total, but it can also become necessary before one bad hole is finished.

BYU Preserve Collegiate follow information

The event is hosted by Cal Poly inside a private community. The tournament page discusses guest credentials rather than public admission, so remote followers should plan on Clippd instead of assuming walk-up access.

The 11-team field

Clippd lists BYU with Oregon, Duke, Little Rock, Saint Mary’s, San Diego, Northwestern, Ohio State, Grand Canyon, Santa Clara and host Cal Poly. The current participant page shows players for several teams, but none for BYU yet. That means any five-player Cougar lineup published elsewhere before the tee sheet fills would be a guess.

There is enough verified context without guessing. BYU enters as the defending team champion after shooting 29 under last year. Oregon finished third in that event and returns in the 2026 field. San Diego, Grand Canyon, Santa Clara, Saint Mary’s and Cal Poly also return, while Duke, Northwestern, Ohio State and Little Rock change the shape of the field.

The defending title does not come with a protected lead. Every team begins at even par Monday, and last year’s winning formula included three Cougars in the individual top five. Tyson Shelley finished third at 11 under, while Simon Kwon and Kihei Akina tied for fifth. Of that trio, only Akina is on BYU’s current roster.

That makes the title defense less a repeat than a rebuild around one returning piece.

How to read a five-count-four leaderboard

Clippd will show five individual scores beside BYU, but only four count toward the team number in each round. The dropped card may change hole by hole. If one Cougar is 4 over and the other four are better, that 4-over score sits outside the total. If another player then makes double bogey, the counting line can switch before the page refresh feels intuitive.

Three checks make the board easier to read:

1. Find the fifth card. The gap between BYU’s fourth and fifth golfers is the team’s safety margin. A one-shot gap means every card is live. A seven-shot gap means four players are carrying almost the entire round.
2. Compare round scores, not only place. Monday contains two rounds. A team can finish the morning near the lead and still lose ground before dinner. The current-round column explains movement better than the overall rank alone.
3. Check how many holes remain. A four-shot deficit with four counting players on the final hole is different from the same deficit with 30 player-holes left. Golf leaderboards compress time as much as score.

The first useful BYU signal may arrive before any birdie: which five players receive the team card, and whether the staff enters an individual outside that five.

Five things to follow

1. Who turns six match-play options into five stroke-play cards?

BYU used Kihei Akina, Drake Harvey, David Liechty, Cooper Jones, Lincoln Markham and Parker Bunn at Big 12 Match Play. Five played in each session, and coach Todd Miller changed the group for the closing round.

The Preserve allows no such mid-round rotation. Five starters must finish both cards Monday, and all five scores remain potentially important even though only four count. Match play rewarded one golfer beating the player beside him. Carmel rewards four complete totals across a long day.

Akina is the anchor. Harvey and Liechty left Salt Lake City unbeaten. Markham won his only match after waiting three sessions. Jones recovered from three losses to win the closing point. Bunn, who counted in all three rounds at the Tucker Invitational, sat Wednesday after three match-play losses.

Those facts do not produce an automatic lineup. They produce a real choice between recent head-to-head form and the stroke-play cards BYU built earlier in the fall.

2. Can Akina bring his PGA Tour finish back to the team total?

Akina has spent the last two weekends in PGA Tour fields rather than college tournaments. He finished ninth at the Bank of Utah Championship, then made the cut in Bermuda with a 66-67 start. That work came as an individual, without four teammate cards moving beside his.

For BYU, his fall college results were already strong: second at the Vuori Invitational and tied for fourth at the Tucker. He then went 4-0 at Big 12 Match Play. The question is not whether he can make enough birdies. He has answered that repeatedly.

The useful test is whether he can give BYU a low, boring counting card after a travel-heavy month. A defending champion needs its best player in the total. It does not need him to chase every flag because he just played on television.

3. Does Harvey’s low-round gear survive 36 holes?

Harvey owns BYU’s sharpest college recovery round this fall. He closed the Tucker with a 67 after opening 69-75, then made eight birdies in his Big 12 Match Play win over Arizona State and played bogey-free in the closing victory over Kansas State.

Monday asks him to sustain that scoring over twice the usual daily load. The Preserve’s host page describes deep bunkers, fast greens and demanding approaches on a course that rises and falls through the Santa Lucia terrain. One hot round helps. The team also needs a second card that stays inside the counting four when legs and decisions get tired.

Watch Harvey’s position after 18 and again late in round two. If he is still one of BYU’s four counters, the freshman will have turned flashes into a full day.

4. Which card absorbs the course instead of fighting it?

The tournament site lists a 74.4 course rating and 141 slope from its 7,041-yard setup. Those numbers describe a difficult course for non-college reference play, not a prediction for this field. Last year’s team leaderboard still reached 29 under because elite college golfers, tournament tees and conditions create their own scoring environment.

The more useful course clue is architectural. The Preserve is a non-returning trail through changing elevation, bunkers and quick greens. A bad early stretch cannot be mentally filed away as something the player will see again on the back nine. The next hole may ask a different question.

BYU won here last year even though its final round was only 1 under. The 13-under and 15-under opening rounds created enough margin to survive a slower finish. That is the model: collect scoring when the course offers it, then keep the difficult stretch from turning one dropped card into two damaged counters.

5. Is the title defense still alive after Monday’s second round?

Thirty-six holes can separate the field quickly. It can also produce a fake runaway if the leaders have finished while other teams still have holes left.

BYU’s benchmark is not last year’s 29-under total. Weather, setup and field strength change. The cleaner comparison is the fourth counting card. If BYU carries four scores near par or better through both Monday rounds, it should give itself a Tuesday position worth following. If the fourth card slips several shots behind the leaders’ fourth scores, Akina cannot erase that alone.

This is also the final fall event on BYU’s schedule. There is no tournament next week to settle a lineup question or repair a closing round. Tuesday’s final card becomes the record the Cougars carry into February.

What a successful defense would show

BYU already knows Akina can lead a college field. The fall has been about finding enough reliable scoring behind him. The Cougars finished fourth at Vuori, third at the Tucker and tied for fifth at Big 12 Match Play without losing a team match.

Those results contain different evidence. Parker Bunn and Austin Shelley supplied top-25 cards at Vuori. Harvey’s 67 protected third at the Tucker. Liechty, Harvey and Akina went unbeaten at match play. Markham and Jones won in the closing sweep.

The Preserve puts all of it back into one familiar equation: five cards, four count. A successful week does not require BYU to duplicate 29 under. It requires the fourth score to hold up across 54 holes while the new lineup handles the course that last year’s veterans solved.

Open the Clippd tee sheet before 8 a.m. Mountain Monday. Confirm BYU’s five rather than assuming them. Then follow the fourth counting score as closely as Akina’s position. The medalist race gets the cleanest number on the page, but the defense will live one card lower.

After play, use the men’s golf results page for the permanent finish and the Big 12 Match Play recap for the lineup evidence BYU carries to California.

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Sources and further reading

• BYU Athletics: official schedule event 25380 for the stable event ID, scheduled status, UTC window and Carmel location.
• BYU Athletics men’s golf schedule for the Oct. 26-27 date, 8 a.m. Mountain listing and fall finale placement.
• The Preserve Golf Club Collegiate event schedule for the Monday and Tuesday local tee windows and 36-hole/18-hole structure.
• Clippd: 2026 Preserve Golf Club Collegiate for the official live-results destination, 11-team field, host and currently posted participants.
• The Preserve course page for the par, listed yardage, rating, slope and course-design details.
• BYU Athletics, Oct. 14: BYU ties for fifth at Big 12 Match Play for the closing sweep, Akina’s 4-0 record and Preserve as the fall finale.
• BYU Athletics, Sept. 26: BYU takes third at the Tucker Invitational for the latest complete Cougar stroke-play team card.
• BYU Athletics 2025-26 season recap and 2025 Clippd leaderboard for BYU’s defending title, 29-under total and three top-five individuals.
• Golf Daily, Sept. 24 for independent confirmation of the 54-hole, five-count-four format and the 2026 field announcement.
• BYU Sport Nuts: men’s golf hub, roster, Big 12 Match Play follow guide and Akina’s Bermuda weekend analysis.