San Diego State standout rises up leaderboard

The golf is the easy part for Justin Hastings.

The hard part might be summoning the wherewithal to finish school at San Diego State.

The Aztecs senior, who shot a 6-under 65 at the Mexico Open at VidantaWorld on Saturday to put a top-10 finish well within reach, is missing classes to play this week. He earned his spot in the field by virtue of winning last month’s Latin American Amateur Championship, for which he also missed school. The LAAC victory also gets him into this year’s Masters (more missed school), the U.S. Open and The Open Championship.

Oh, and he’ll also be playing in the Puerto Rico Open, March 6-9. (Yep, more missed school.)

“I’ll tell you what changes is graduating,” Hastings said of his jam-packed schedule, a relatively new development. “That's going to be a difficult one. I'm home for about three days after this and I have to take about three or four exams and I only have three classes, so it's going to be a tough one school-wise the last couple of months, but obviously do my best.

“At three and a half years, let's complete it, obviously,” he added.

This is just the second PGA TOUR start for Hastings, who hails from the Cayman Islands and missed a 5-foot putt on 18 to narrowly miss the cut at last year’s Puerto Rico Open.

“I think the biggest thing I took away from Puerto Rico was to be a little bit more even keel,” he said. “I feel like I'm very passionate and emotional sometimes and I feel like I let that get the better of me down the stretch.”

The best finish by an amateur on the PGA TOUR this season is by Luke Clanton (T15 at the Farmers Insurance Open), who could earn his PGA TOUR card via PGA TOUR University Accelerated at next week’s Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches. Clanton also finished T2 at The RSM Classic in November, the last tournament of last season.

Should Hastings equal those finishes it would be no great surprise.

Hastings, whose father is his caddie this week, has the best career scoring average on record (since 1993-94) at SDSU: 71.48 through 108 rounds. Not bad, considering world No. 2 Xander Schauffele played there collegiately (71.50, from 2013-15).

Oh, and Hastings also has the program’s best 18-hole score (62, tied with four others), the best 36-hole score (127) and the best 54-hole score (195).

At the Latin American Amateur last month, when he built a four-shot lead with an 8-under 64, then held on to win in a 36-hole Saturday, he became the second player from the Cayman Islands in the last four years to win the prestigious event, joining Aaron Jarvis.

It’s all meant a lot of schedule juggling for Hastings, who is not complaining.

“Missed a couple exams,” he said when asked what’s been happening in school. “I think the boys are qualifying right now for our next event out in Vegas, which is a great college event at Southern Highlands, which I'll unfortunately be missing because I've got the Puerto Rico Open that week, and then the couple days before that I'm going out to Augusta for the first time to see it. Unfortunate but fortunate that I'm missing it, I guess.

“I'll definitely miss the boys,” he added, “but hopefully they understand that I've got some cool stuff to do.”