Northwestern senior golfer Tom Johnson can’t provide an explanation for the men’s golf team’s poor performance this past weekend.
“We just totally screwed up,” he said.
The Wildcats placed 10th out of 14 teams at the Fossum-TaylorMade Invitational in East Lansing, Mich., a disappointing performance in their last tournament appearance before the Big Ten championships this weekend.
Out of the nine Big Ten teams playing in the Fossum Invitational, NU beat only one — Michigan. The Cats previously had defeated all the conference teams present except for Ohio State.
“We were supposed to beat all of those teams so we could get our ranking up and now we have to do something drastic here at the end just so we can make Regionals,” Johnson said.
Junior Dillon Dougherty’s play was the one bright spot for the Cats last weekend. Shooting rounds of 76, 75 and 72, he secured 13th place, his fifth top-15 finish of the year.
NU’s other four players didn’t crack the top 30. Freshman Dave Merkow and senior Casey Strunk tied for 31st, junior T.C. Ford placed 53rd, and Johnson wound up in 56th after shooting rounds of 79, 77 and 78.
After the team’s play Saturday, Johnson said he “didn’t even look at the scoreboard because I didn’t want to see.”
Indiana beat the field at the par-72 course, finishing 31 strokes ahead of NU. Illinois finished second, four strokes behind Indiana, and Minnesota rounded out the top three teams, finishing three strokes behind the Fighting Illini.
After the tournament, NU’s ranking on the Golfweek/Sagarin college team ratings dropped 10 spots from 42 to 52. Illinois and Indiana, who had previously been behind NU in the ratings, jumped ahead of the Cats.
Merkow said team members struggled, especially with their short games.
“In the first round I was 2-under through five (holes) and then I just kind of slowly started hitting bad shots and didn’t get it up and down,” Merkow said. “The whole team just struggled with keeping the ball in play.”
Rainy weather made play difficult for everyone in the tournament, resulting in higher scores across the board.
Players were constantly trying to keep their hands and grips dry and were forced to fumble with umbrellas before and after every shot, he said.
With the league championships scheduled for this weekend in Ann Arbor, Mich., the Cats hope an 8 a.m. team meeting Tuesday will help them focus on the challenge ahead.
They’re still in contention to win the title, players said — as long as they don’t play like they did last weekend.
“I know we can beat everyone of those teams,” Johnson said. “We always play well at Big Tens. I’m still optimistic even though we had the crappiest tournament we could have had.”
