Team heads to West Lafayette for Big Ten Championships

After finishing just one stroke out of third place in their final regular season tournament, the IU men’s golf team will begin its postseason run Friday in the Big Ten Championship hosted by Purdue in West Lafayette.

Two weeks of practice allowed the golfers to refocus from their fifth place finish in Illinois - where a few costly mistakes and late-round surges by Northwestern and Illinois State dropped them just one shot back from a tie for third.

Freshman David Mills led the team, with a tie for 13th place with a two-round total of four-over 148 after consecutive rounds of 74.

IU will try for a fifth tournament title this season with 36 holes on Friday and another 18 holes both Saturday and Sunday. The team, ranked No. 36 in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin ranking, is the fourth-highest ranked team in the conference going into the tournament, following Illinois (No. 13), Iowa (No. 17) and Ohio State (No. 28). Other top-60 Big Ten teams include Michigan (No. 51), Purdue (No. 54) and Northwestern (No. 58).

In the Big Ten Championships last season, the Hoosiers posted a sixth-place finish led by former senior Alex Martin, but IU coach Mike Mayer sees no reason the team can’t improve on that finish, or even contend for a title.

“This season, we have four players that I think have a realistic chance of winning this golf tournament,” Mayer said.  “I don’t think I could say that last year and that’s really big, and that will go a lot towards giving us a real good shot at winning this weekend.”