The players on Northwestern men’s golf team have already proved to the Big Ten that they are for real. Now they want to show the rest of the country.
When the Wildcats tee off in the NCAA Central Regional Championships today, they will have just the opportunity to do that.
Even after a successful fall season that included a victory and two runner-up finishes in five events, the players on the team still felt they weren’t receiving the respect they deserved.
Heading into the spring with a chip on their shoulders, the players responded by winning two more events in the spring, the Kepler Intercollegiate and the Big Ten Championships.
“I think we proved to our conference that we aren’t a fluke,” junior Chris Wilson said. “Our goal all along was to show people how good we are. But that wasn’t just referring to our conference, it was referring to everyone.”
In the 27 team field that includes Oklahoma State, ranked second by Golfweek, No. 4 Georgia Tech, No. 6 Texas A&M, No. 8 Clemson and No. 18 Duke, the Cats have exactly the chance they’ve been hoping for all season.
“We want to show that we are one of the best programs in the country, but you have to do that on a large scale,” sophomore Kyle Moore said. “This is the stage where you show everyone.”
The 54-hole tournament, hosted by Cleveland State, will take place at Sand Ridge Golf Club in Chardon, Ohio. The course was designed by famous golf-course architect Tom Fazio, who also designed Conway Farms Golf Club where the Cats won the Big Ten Championships. Like Conway Farms, Sand Ridge features narrow fairways, thick rough and fast greens.
“It will play to our advantage if it’s like Conway Farms,” Moore said. “We obviously compete well on that style of course.”
The Cats will need to finish in the top 10 this week in order to advance to the NCAA National Championships on May 31-June 3 at Crosswater Golf Club in Sunriver, Oregon. There they would join the top 10 teams from the East and West Regionals in a 30-team tournament for the national title.
In the three-week break between the Big Ten Championships and the NCAA Regionals, the Cats were able to relax, catch up on schoolwork and fine-tune some mechanics in their games both on the course and on the practice range.
During that time, several players received awards and honors of various kinds. Junior David Merkow received the Big Ten Player of the Year award, joining Scott Rowe and Luke Donald as the third NU player to win the award.
Merkow also was named to the First-Team All-Big Ten along with Big Ten Championship medalist Wilson. Senior Dillon Dougherty was named to the second team. Moore was Big Ten Sportsmanship Award recipient.
Moore also competed in the Nationwide Tour’s Virginia Beach Open two weeks ago, missing the cut. He earned an exemption to the event by winning the 49th Annual Eastern Amateur Golf Tournament over the summer.
Earlier this week, Dougherty was named to the 12-member United States Team that will compete in the 2006 Fuji Xerox United States versus Japan Collegiate Golf Championship over the summer.
Despite all of the individual accolades the Cats have received this season, each one would gladly trade them for a national championship. And by heading into the tournament having won two of their last three events, the Cats appear to be in as good position as ever to do so. If they do, it still might come as a surprise to a lot of teams.
“Sooner or later everyone is going to have to realize that we can play,” Wilson said. “If they keep seeing our name on top of the leaderboard enough times, eventually they will have to recognize and notice us.”
Reach Michael Schlossberg at [email protected].
