Caden Fioroni (UNLV Athletics Photo)

Fioroni, who teed off on No. 10, started even par through his first five holes but recorded nine birdies on the remaining 13 holes, including a six-hole birdie streak from Holes No. 2 through 7 and then finished his round off with a birdie on No. 9.

Tyran Snyders of Texas Tech, Nicolas Dominguez of USC, and Aaron Du of California are T2 at 5-under. Luke Powell of UCLA, Santiago De La Fuente of Houston, and Antonio Safa of USC are T5 at 4-under.

De La Fuente is coming off a win at the Latin America Amateur Championship, earning an invite to the 2023 Masters Tournament, 2023 U.S. Open and 2023 Open Championship.

2023 champion Michael Brennan of Wake Forest shot a first-round 1-under 70 and sits T16 with Omar Morales of UCLA. Brennan was paired with the red-hot Fioroni in the opening round. 

In the team competition, Texas Tech is 7-under, and one shot better than USC, which is at 6-under and in solo second place. UNLV is in solo third place at 5-under, UCLA is in solo fourth place at 4-under, and California is in solo fifth place at 3-under.

The Southwestern Intercollegiate was started by USC in 1978. The schools co-hosted the event in 2013 and 2014. After a year without a tournament, Pepperdine then took over hosting duties in 2016 and merged it with its own home tournament, which had been played at a few different sites.

Past winners include Sahith Theegala of Pepperdine (2017, 2020) and David Puig of Arizona State (2021, 2022), have both won twice. Other individual winners include Justin Suh of USC, Maverick McNealy of Stanford, Patrick Cantlay of UCLA, Anthony Kim of Oklahoma, and in 1996, Tiger Woods won the tournament while he was at Stanford.