WAILUA — The public is able to view the action at no charge when the 44th John Burns Intercollegiate golf tournament opens with a shotgun start on Thursday morning at 8 a.m. at the Wailua Golf Course.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to help,” said Kenji Miyata, the Hawai‘i State Junior Golf Association tournament operations manager. “It would be nice to go, but I have to see what’s coming up that I need to work on.”
Miyata is a former golfer with the Kaua‘i Interscholastic Federation along with Pono Tokioka who is an alumnus KIF golfer as well as a University of Hawai‘i golfer.
The tournament named after former governor John A. Burns marks the return of the University of Hawai‘i men’s golf team to Kaua‘i as host to its longest running tournament.
This year’s tournament that runs Thursday through Saturday with 8 a.m. shotgun starts on each day will feature 21 teams, and according to University of Hawai‘i athletic department officials, is probably one of the toughest in tournament history with 13 teams ranked in the Top 100, including four in the Top 15 — No. 6 Arizona, No. 10 Texas A&M, No. 14 North Carolina, and No. 15 Brigham Young University.
Peter Kuest of BYU returns as the defending champion, and other top individual golfers include No. 24 Jack Trent of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and No. 25 William Paysse of Texas A&M.
Arizona State took the Burns title in 2019.
University of Hawai‘i freshman Kotaro Murata of Japan finished the recent 29th Amer Ari Intercollegiate tournament at the Waikoloa Resorts Kings Course on the Big Island in a tie for 10th place with a 54-hole total 223 following three days of sub-par shooting.
Murata joins other Hawai‘i golfers, including Trevor Hirata, Nickolaus Nelson, Justin Arcano, and Kanata Irei in tee-ing off on the first round, Thursday.
Hawai‘i golfers in individual play for the tournament include Cole Yoshida, AJ Teraoka, Justin Ngan, and Matthew Lloyd.
Players will play 54 holes over three days at the Wailua Golf Course measuring in at 6,991 yards, par 72.
The Burns tournament is the fourth the Hawai‘i Warriors will have hosted this season, including the Hoakalei Country Club Invitational on O‘ahu, the Ka‘anapali Classic Collegiate Invitational on Maui, the recent Amer Ari Invitational.
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Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-0453 or dfujimoto@thegardenisland.com.
