No. 23 BYU men’s golf begins the William H. Tucker Invitational at 7:30 a.m. MDT Friday at the UNM Championship Course in Albuquerque. There is no announced television stream or radio broadcast. The official Clippd leaderboard is the practical way to follow all three rounds.
Friday carries most of the work: 36 holes from a shotgun start. The final 18 will be played Saturday. BYU has not published a Saturday start time, so treat the live leaderboard and the official event record as the morning check rather than guessing that the Friday schedule will repeat.
The more interesting change is on BYU’s card. Kihei Akina, Parker Bunn and Drake Harvey remain in the five after the season opener. Seniors Peter Kim and Angus Klintworth make their season debuts, replacing freshman Austin Shelley and sophomore Jackson Mauss. Shelley will still play the same course as an individual. His score just cannot count toward BYU’s team total.
BYU Tucker Invitational follow information
| Event detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Event | 2026 William H. Tucker Invitational |
| Dates | Friday-Saturday, Sept. 25-26, 2026 |
| Friday start | 7:30 a.m. MDT shotgun; 36 holes |
| Saturday | 18-hole final round; start time not published by BYU |
| Venue | UNM Championship Course, Albuquerque, New Mexico |
| Live scoring | Official Clippd team leaderboard |
| TV/stream | No official broadcast listing published |
| Radio | No official radio listing published |
| BYU event | Official schedule event 25378 |
| Permanent schedule | BYU men’s golf schedule |
Clippd lists 15 teams and six BYU players. College golf counts the best four scores from the five-player team lineup in each round. Shelley’s individual card appears on the player board, but it never enters the BYU team number.
That distinction matters during Friday’s shotgun. Players begin on different holes, so two cards marked “thru 9” have not necessarily faced the same part of the course. The first clean team checkpoint arrives when all five lineup players finish a round and the dropped score is settled. Then they go again.
BYU traded two young cards for two senior ones
BYU finished fourth at the Vuori Invitational with three sophomores and two freshmen in the lineup. Akina took second at 3-under 210. Bunn tied for 14th at 3 over. Shelley and Harvey both supplied counting scores in their college debuts, while Mauss had two usable opening rounds before a closing 78.
The full Vuori scorecard left BYU with a one-shot miss behind third-place USC and a clear question beneath Akina: could the Cougars put four low cards together on the same day?
Todd Miller changed the people available to answer it. Kim is not a cautious veteran addition. He owns two college wins, a 61 and a 71.11 career scoring average across 118 official rounds. Last season he played all 14 tournaments, won a share of The Tindall and finished second at the Bridgestone Collegiate Invitational with a 16-under 200.
Klintworth brings a smaller file but improved sharply last year. His scoring average dropped from 76.17 in 2024-25 to 72.5 in 2025-26. He closed the Bridgestone with a career-low 68 and tied for 20th at 4 under.
Both seniors now have to turn old evidence into current scores. Neither played at the Vuori opener. A name with 118 college rounds does not get a September card for free, and a 72.5 average does not guarantee a counting round after a competitive layoff.
Shelley gives BYU a useful control group. He shot 73-74-72 and tied for 22nd at Vuori. In Albuquerque, he will face the same course and conditions as the counting five. If he beats one or both returning seniors, the next lineup conversation gets uncomfortable in a productive way.
Four scorecard tests to follow
1. Does Kim immediately become BYU’s second anchor?
Akina’s second-place opener confirmed the top of the lineup. The gap behind him was nine shots to Bunn and 12 to Shelley over 54 holes.
Kim has the résumé to compress that space. His two college wins and runner-up 200 show a ceiling that no other player on this week’s card owns besides Akina. His job is not to stage an individual duel with Akina before breakfast. It is to keep BYU from becoming one brilliant card plus three rescue scores.
There is one useful caution in Albuquerque. Kim played this event as a freshman in 2023 and shot 73-75-78 for a 10-over 226. That experience proves familiarity, not mastery. Three years later, the course offers a direct measure of how much his floor has moved.
2. Can BYU improve its fourth counting score?
BYU’s opening team rounds were 288, 289 and 287. The fourth counter in each round was 74, 74 and 74. Those are not disastrous cards. Across three rounds, though, they left the Cougars 12 shots behind winner Arkansas and one behind USC.
The Tucker format makes the fourth score easy to track. Ignore the temptation to stare only at Akina near the individual lead. Find BYU’s fourth counting player on Clippd. If that card moves toward par, the seniors have changed the team shape. If it sits around 74 again while New Mexico and the rest of the field stack red numbers, the lineup swap has not bought anything yet.
Friday doubles the pressure because the Cougars must solve the count twice without an overnight reset. One poor opening card can be dropped. Two players carrying damage at the same time will push one of those scores into the total.
3. Does Harvey hold the freshman spot he earned?
Harvey opened his college career with a 74 that BYU dropped. He answered that afternoon with a 72, the team’s second-best score of the round, then closed with another counting 74.
That response earned him the one freshman place in the new five. Shelley had the lower 54-hole total, but Harvey’s second round showed the repair Miller needs during a 36-hole day. Albuquerque asks whether that was the beginning of a pattern or one good recovery.
The comparison is unusually clean because Shelley remains in the field. Harvey’s score counts; Shelley’s does not. Both still have 54 holes to argue for the next start.
4. Can BYU stay close to the host before Saturday?
New Mexico arrives with a runner-up finish in Japan and a 10-shot win at the Canadian Collegiate Invitational. Senior Johnnie Clark won the individual title at both events. He shot 6-under 207 in Canada and became the first Lobo in 23 years to win consecutive starts, according to New Mexico’s official recap.
That is the host standard on a familiar course. New Mexico has five players in its regular team count and four additional entries listed by Clippd. BYU does not need to match Clark birdie for birdie to produce a good tournament, but it cannot give the Lobos a large 36-hole head start and expect Saturday to erase it.
The 15-team field also includes No. 24 Arizona, Colorado, Arkansas State, Grand Canyon, Long Beach State, Missouri, New Mexico State, San Diego State, Santa Clara, SMU, UC Santa Barbara, UNLV and UTEP. Colorado finished one shot ahead of BYU at Vuori, so the leaderboard includes an immediate rematch as well as the host test.
The course rewards complete cards
The UNM Championship Course is listed at 7,555 yards and par 72. Its own course guide describes wide but rolling fairways, difficult approaches to undulating greens and misses that can find rough, loose desert sand, water or sagebrush. The property sits at roughly 5,300 feet.
Last year’s Tucker showed how quickly the same course can change shape. Colorado opened with a 289, then shot 271 in the second round before a final 287. The field scoring average moved from 72.76 to 71.63, then rose to 73.20 in the last round. Long Beach State won at 23 under, and 43 of 100 players finished below par.
Those numbers are context, not a forecast. This year’s setup and conditions can differ. They do show why the first leaderboard refresh should not settle anyone’s opinion. Friday contains two full rounds, and last year’s final day played more than a stroke and a half harder on average than the second round.
Akina enters with the hottest BYU card after rounds of 71-70-69 at Vuori. Bunn gave BYU three counting scores. Kim and Klintworth add experience. Harvey gets another chance to make a freshman score matter. That is enough depth on paper.
The leaderboard will test whether it exists in the same round.
BYU’s next event is Big 12 Match Play at Salt Lake Country Club on Oct. 12-14. Tucker is the last stroke-play card before that format change and the last chance this month to sort the five with ordinary four-counting-score arithmetic.
Open Clippd before 7:30 a.m. Mountain Friday. Follow the fourth score, compare Harvey with Shelley, and check the full team total again after round one. Akina can keep BYU near the top. The other four cards decide whether it stays there.
Sources and further reading
- BYU Athletics, Sept. 23: No. 23 men’s golf set to tee off at the William H. Tucker Invitational for the lineup, 15-team field, Friday shotgun time, 36/18-hole format and official live-scoring link.
- BYU Athletics: official schedule event 25378 for the stable event ID, competition status, date window and UNM Championship Course location.
- Clippd: 2026 William H. Tucker Invitational for official live team scoring and the published participant list.
- BYU Athletics, Sept. 16: Akina takes second; Cougars finish fourth at Vuori for BYU’s opening team total, player cards and finishes.
- BYU Athletics player records for Peter Kim and Angus Klintworth for career rounds, averages, low scores and prior finishes.
- New Mexico Athletics, Sept. 15: Lobos and Clark take titles in Canada for the host’s opening results and Clark’s consecutive wins.
- UNM Championship Course guide for the published 7,555-yard, par-72 setup, altitude and course characteristics.
- Colorado Athletics, Sept. 20, 2025: Tucker Invitational final for last year’s team order, round averages and scoring context.
- BYU Sport Nuts: men’s golf hub, roster, schedule, Vuori lineup guide and Vuori recap.
