After a long, successful season, the No. 2 Stanford men’s golf team will host the U.S. Intercollegiate tournament this weekend, which will mark the Card’s first home tournament of the season, as well as its last tournament before heading to the Pacific-10 Conference Championships in Oregon.

The Cardinal has placed in the top five in all nine tournaments in which it has competed this year and will be looking for its sixth tournament victory this weekend — its best record since the Tiger Woods era (‘94-’96).

“We are really excited for this weekend,” coach Conrad Ray said. “I think that we have built up some great motivation because the last time we won this tournament was 1995. We are looking at this Stanford event as the beginning of our postseason. The guys have been practicing hard and are excited to be able to give it a run to see if we can pull in another victory.”

The tournament will consist of 15 teams from across the nation: Arkansas, Colorado State, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada-Reno, Oregon State, Rice, San Jose State, UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, UNC-Wilmington, Washington, Washington State, Xavier and Stanford.

The Cardinal is the highest-ranked team that will participate in the 54-hole tournament. UCLA won the tournament last year with a two-round total of 578 after a rain storm forced officials to end play early. Junior Rob Grube took the individual win with a score of 135.

“I think everyone is playing well and working hard,” Grube said. “Everyone feels good about our chances this week. I’m not into making predictions, but I’m looking forward to having a good week on our home course, and hopefully we can pull off a victory. After this, the only thing that matters is making it to the NCAAs in June. I know that we are all looking forward to playing hard that week.”

Cardinal players have also notched many great individual performances throughout this season. Each member of the team has competed in at least one event, and three different members have golfed their way to at least one individual victory this season (Grube, senior Zack Miller and freshman Joseph Bramlett). The Cardinal also holds some of the highest individual rankings in the country with Miller at 14th, Bramlett at 20th, senior Matt Savage at 21st and Grube at 31st.

“We’ve got eight guys who are all playing well and deserve to be in the line-up every week,” Savage said. “We’ve played well in every tournament this year, but that doesn’t mean anything until now. We’ve got the postseason coming up, and that is when the tournaments start mattering. We’re just going to keep doing what we’ve been doing all year: working hard and let the results play out.

“It’s always nice to play at home,” he continued. “We know the course well — where to hit it, how the putts break. Even though that will be an advantage, we’ve still got to hit the shots and stick each of our game plans. We’re looking forward to having a good tournament and going out to protect our home course.”

As Stanford comes home before it enters the toughest part of its season, the Cardinal is confident that its efforts can piece together for one of its best finishes in years.

“This season has been a lot of fun,” Ray said. “The guys have come together to form a great group of friendships to build a wonderful team dynamic. However, we really won’t be satisfied until we can put an exclamation mark on our season by doing well in the Pac-10 championships and the NCAAs. We have a long way to go because the most important events are to come.”