The IU men’s golf team will tee off against the Iowa Hawkeyes on Friday in the opening round of the 2017 Big Ten Match Play Championship.
The event kicks off this weekend at the Ocean Course at Hammock Beach Resort in Palm Coast, Florida. This will be the Hoosiers’ first tournament since November.
The team dialed back practice time during the brief off-season but continued to play on IU’s course for qualifying rounds. Last weekend, the team got a taste of the Florida weather when it went to Naples for an alumni event.
Seniors Andrew Havill and Keegan Vea, juniors Brendon Doyle and Christian Fairbanks, sophomore Jake Brown and freshman Brock Ochsenreiter will represent the Hoosiers this weekend. Fairbanks makes his second appearance of the 2016-17 season this weekend after competing as an individual in Wolf Run Intercollegiate, the first tournament of the fall season.
Although he didn’t make many tournament appearances in the fall, his recent play has been more indicative of his true self, IU Coach Mike Mayer said.
“He could be a huge asset for us,” Mayer said. “I’m really excited to get him in there and see what he can do and see how he can help the team.”
The Hoosiers have experienced success in the head-to-head, bracket-style format of the match play championships. Last year, they beat No. 20-ranked Penn State in their opening round. They also won the tournament in 2009 on the shoulders of Jorge Campillo's performance in which he went undefeated in head-to-head matchups.
IU's opening opponent, Iowa, comes to Florida after its best finish of the season thus far. Hawkeye sophomore Matthew Walker fired off a season-low 54-hole total of 210 (-3) and guided his team to a fifth-place finish at Royal Oaks Intercollegiate in October.
In IU’s last tournament before the break, the Quail Valley Collegiate, the team finished 14 out of 15 and shot a collective 879 (+15). The final round of the Quail Valley Intercollegiate saw the Hoosiers record their second-best team score — 292 — for a single round this season and move up one spot to finish 14th with a total score of 879.
Not all of the Big Ten teams are competing this weekend in match play. One important scratch is Illinois. The No. 2-ranked Fighting Illini opted not to participate in the tournament after receiving an invitation to play in a different tournament for the top five teams in the country.
This means if IU comes out on top of Iowa, it will face a top-25 bubble team in Michigan State on Friday afternoon. Michigan State has the top ranking of the teams present at the Match Play Championships.
“We’re playing well,” Mayer said. “We’re swinging well. We need to go see if we can compete well."
