Men's golf finishes sixth in Big Ten Match Play

The IU men’s golf team finished sixth this weekend at the Big Ten Match Play Championship in Bradenton, Fla.

The Hoosiers tied Minnesota in the fifth-place match, but the Golden Gophers earned fifth-place honors by winning the tiebreaker with more holes won as a team.

IU won their first contest Friday  against Wisconsin, 3-2, but fell short during a close matchup with Northwestern. The No. 6-seeded Hoosiers lost 4-1 to the No. 3-seeded Wildcats in a match that IU Coach Mike Mayer said was closer than the scores indicated. Three of the five rounds came down to the final hole.

IU freshman Will Seger, who went 3-1 in his matchups, said the Northwestern match said a lot about where the Hoosiers stand at this point in the season.

“I think it shows we are close,” Seger said. “We just need to keep getting better and better, and we can beat these kinds of teams. Playing a close match like that against a good team like Northwestern shows we have the ability to beat anyone in the Big Ten.”

During Saturday’s morning session, Indiana won its matchup against Ohio State 3-2 to put them into the fifth-place game against No. 5 seed Minnesota. That round finished with a score of 2-2-1 due to IU senior David Mills and Minnesota freshman Jose Mendez halving their matchup.

Since Minnesota won more holes as a team, the Golden Gophers finished in fifth place in the tournament. However, when reporting scores to the NCAA, the standings will illustrate a tie for fifth.

“It’s a little bit frustrating just because I had the opportunity to win my match on the last hole,” Mills said. “I had the opportunity, but I came up a little short.”

This was IU’s first competition of the spring season and their first experience with the match play format of the year. Only Mills had competed in a collegiate match play competition before this weekend.

“What’s interesting about match play is that there’s pressure on every hole of every match,” Mayer said. “So it’s nice to put your kids under that kind of pressure this time of year so they can get themselves prepared to be competitive. And I thought, for the most part, our kids handled it really well. The ones who didn’t, I think, learned how to push themselves and understand the game a little better.”

Mayer said he hopes to build off this weekend’s finish going forward.

“This weekend we were competitive every hole,” Mayer said. “We still need to get better, but now we know what we need to get better at. Overall, I have to be pleased with the continued improvement and development of our team altogether.”