Coming off a great collegiate campaign for the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Malaysia’s Khavish Varadan is gearing up for a busy off-season which includes playing in a Korn Ferry Tour event and the prestigious US Amateur Championship.
While the UAB ‘Blazers’ failed to progress past the 54-hole cut mark in the recent NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship, Khavish impressed in his maiden appearance in the collegiate golf finale. The lanky young golfer carded rounds of 75, 71 and 72 to finish T56, just missing out on making it to the final 18 holes as one of nine players not on an advancing team.
“Playing in the NCAA National Championship was great because I was able to test my abilities against the best college players in the country. I hit the ball good enough to win, but not progressing to the last round was definitely a disappointment,” said Khavish, who is in his second season as a freshman with the UAB Blazers due to Covid-19.
Khavish revealed that he will be keeping himself in competitive mode over the next few months by playing in a number of tournaments, notably the Korn Ferry Tour’s Price Cutter Championship presented by Dr Pepper at Highland Springs Country Club in Springfield, Missouri on July 22-25, and the US Amateur Championship at Oakmont Country Club in Philadelphia on August 9-16. The US Amateur is arguably the most prestigious men’s amateur championship in the world and will see two rounds of strokeplay at Oakmont and Longue Vue Club, from where the top 64 players advance to the matchplay stage played solely at Oakmont.
Khavish was ranked second on the UAB team for the 2020-2021 season with a 72.3 stroke average and had a string of excellent performances this year. The 20-year-old from Kuala Lumpur was individual runner-up at the Conference USA Championship in late April and picked up his first collegiate title at the PGA Works Collegiate Championship at TPC Sawgrass the following week. The PGA Works event was open only to minority collegiate golfers.
In the NCAA Noblesville Regional in mid-May, Khavish finished T23 on even-par after rounds of 74, 70 and 72 at The Sagamore Club.
“It wasn’t a bad freshman season even though I made multiple changes to my golf game, which will only be good for the future,” noted Khavish modestly, adding that he misses his family as he hasn’t seen them for a while.
Khavish was named Conference USA’s Freshman of the Year for 2019-20 and earned second team all-conference accolades this year.
