A golden rule in sports is not to celebrate too early, and golf is no exception. Greg Norman at the 1996 Masters Tournament, Jordan Spieth at the same tournament in 2016 and Jean van de Velde at the 1999 Open Championship were all on the wrong side of it.
For Indiana men’s golf, the 2026 spring season is a chance to rebound from an up-and-down fall schedule. At the Rod Myers Invitational hosted by Duke University on Sept. 5-7 in Durham, North Carolina, Indiana finished in third place with a team score of 858 (-6). The Hoosiers placed behind the Blue Devils and the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
But when looking at the record books from the 2025 fall season, those three days in September were the best result for Indiana. The Hoosiers never finished better than third in their other five tournaments, including back-to-back 15th-place performances at the Quail Valley Collegiate Invitational and the Ka'anapali Classic to close out the season.
“I think we underperformed a little bit,” Indiana head coach Mike Mayer said Feb 9. “I really do. I’ve had teams in my history that weren’t the best teams, but I think this team has the potential.”
After coming back from a three-month hiatus in collegiate tournaments, Indiana turned that “potential” into a strong showing at the Gators Invitational in Gainesville, Florida, to open the spring season.
Over the two-day, three-round tournament hosted by the University of Florida at the Mark Bostic Golf Course, the Hoosiers finished tied for eighth place with a team total of 860 (+20). Indiana shared a place with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Georgia Southern University but finished higher than Big Ten foe Penn State.
The tournament hosted the last three NCAA Champions — Florida (2023), Auburn University (2024) and Oklahoma State University (2025) — plus 21 golfers in the top 200 of the World Amateur Golf Rankings as of Feb. 20.
Redshirt senior Clay Merchent ranks 336th on the World Amateur Golf Rankings as of Feb. 20 — the highest-rated Hoosier on this year’s roster. However, Merchent was out of the lineup for Indiana's opening spring tournament due to a lingering injury, Mayer said.
In 2022, Merchent withdrew from the NCAA Regional in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, after the first round due to persistent rib pain. An injury later diagnosed as Slipping Rib Syndrome kept Merchent out of the final 11 events of the 2022-23 season and the whole 2023-24 season.
Merchent slowly worked his game back to an elite level, culminating in an All-Big Ten Second Team selection last season. He posted a stroke average of 71.58, the fourth-lowest mark in program history. Merchent also finished top five in three events, plus he tied for 15th at the Big Ten Championships and tied for 38th at the NCAA Urbana Regional.
“He played kind of hurt all fall, so we’re trying to do some things to overcome that,” Mayer said. “Extremely talented young man, a talented player. No question on paper, our best player on our team.”
Indiana returned eight out of 10 players from last season. The only departures were then-redshirt senior Robert Bender III and then-senior Kieran Hogarth. In their place, freshmen Jake Cesare and Caleb Schnarr started their first seasons in Bloomington.
Both players joined the Hoosiers after distinguished high school careers. Cesare — the younger brother of junior Alec Cesare — earned All-State first team honors all four years at Westfield High School in Westfield, Indiana. Schnarr finished tied for eighth at the 2025 ISHAA State Finals for Jasper High School in Jasper, Indiana.
“We love Midwestern players,” Mayer said. “They have that mentality and toughness that we're looking for ... We want that relationship. We want players who fit our style. We want to fit their style.”
Regardless of high school accolades, more experienced players were rewarded with playing more rounds during the 2025 fall schedule. Merchent, Alec Cesare, junior Nick Piesen and sophomore Bradley Chill Jr. all led the Hoosiers with 18 rounds played.
Just behind Merchent at 71.56, junior Cole Starnes has produced the second-lowest stroke average (71.89) between the fall and spring seasons. Chill Jr. is the only Hoosier with a top-five finish after coming tied for third at the Rod Myers Invitational.
Learning from its fall results is crucial for an Indiana program looking to return to the NCAA Championship for the first time since the 2022-23 campaign. At last season’s Big Ten Championships, the Hoosiers finished in eighth place with a total score of 860 (+20).
Now, the Hoosiers will set their sights on Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in North Plains, Oregon, for the 2026 Big Ten Championships on May 1-3. Indiana is nationally ranked No. 90 by clippd, which is 14th-best in the 18-team conference as of Feb. 20.
“We want to be in the thick of things,” Mayer said. “Not only in the thick of things, but we want to be right there and hoist that championship trophy at the end of the tournament.”
Before the Big Ten Championships, the Hoosiers still must play in five tournaments on their 2026 spring schedule. Starting with the Colleton River Collegiate on March 1-2 in Bluffton, South Carolina, and finishing with the Hoosier Collegiate on April 18-19 at The Pfau Course in Bloomington.
After last season’s Hoosier Collegiate was deemed unplayable due to heavy rain in Bloomington, the No. 97 golf course on Golf Digest’s America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses gives Indiana a home field advantage.
“It’s an incredibly good golf course,” Mayer said. “It gives you a lot of flexibility and options from playing extremely difficult, one of the toughest golf courses in the world, but you can set it up where it's not.”
