For the past few months, every time the players on the Northwestern men’s golf team talked about their goals for the spring season, they always mentioned the same four words: re-establish Big Ten dominance.
During the fall, the Wildcats established that dominance. Not once during the five fall events did the Cats finish behind another Big Ten team. The fall featured one victory and a pair of runner-up finishes.
“We clearly separated ourselves from everyone else in the fall,” junior Chris Wilson said. “We didn’t want to be complacent with that. We wanted to look at the spring as a brand-new season and not rest on our laurels. We set out to show that the fall was not a fluke and that we didn’t just play well in a few tournaments.”
In their quest to reestablish their dominance, the Cats set the lofty goal of not finishing behind another Big Ten team all spring. In comparison to the fall events, which were more national and had tougher fields, the spring events were primarily regional and always contained numerous teams from the conference.
After clearly being the dominant team in the fall, the Cats did not have the same kind of success in the spring events.
While they won the Kepler Invitational, they also finished in the bottom half of the field in three of their five spring events, granted one of those events was without senior leader Dillon Dougherty.
“We definitely haven’t accomplished our goal yet,” junior David Merkow said. “Right now we are only one of the top teams in the Big Ten. We are not the one best team in the Big Ten. That’s going to change this weekend.”
With the Big Ten Championships set to tee off today, the Cats will have one final chance to achieve their goal.
NU will be hosting the event for the first time in 50 years. The tournament will be held at Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest, Ill., about 30 minutes north of Evanston. The 11-team competition features 36 holes on Friday, 18 on Saturday, and 18 on Sunday.
With the Cats being the host school of the Big Ten Championships and all five players feeling good about their games, they believe everything is setting up perfectly for a victory this weekend. They also believe that a win in this event would accomplish their goal of Big Ten dominance.
“If we win this week, it will for sure be established,” Dougherty said. “We are trying to get this team thinking that we don’t just want to win, we want to win by a lot.”
One of the Cats’ biggest problems this spring has been getting everyone to play well at the same time. However, that appears to be changing. Sophomore Kyle Moore has recorded his top two finishes of the spring in his last two events, one of which was his first collegiate victory at the Kepler Invitational.
Wilson notched the best finish of his collegiate career last weekend at the Fossum Invitational.
Merkow has three top-10 finishes in five spring events. Dougherty appears to be back in form after competing in the Masters, and sophomore Dan Doyle, who has struggled this spring, finished 16th two weeks ago at the Kepler Invitational.
“Our team believes that everyone can play well,” coach Pat Goss said. “Everyone hasn’t shown it at the same time. If three or four guys play well this week, and the other one or two play OK, then the only hope the other teams can have this week is false hope.”
Reach Michael Schlossberg at [email protected].
