Though golfing fans are focusing their attention on the happenings at Augusta National, the college golf world is focused on Bloomington, Ind.
Northwestern is set to tee off April 6 and 7 at the Adidas Hoosier Invitational hosted by Big Ten foe Indiana. The event will be NU’s fourth of the spring season and a key one for a team looking to compete with the Big Ten’s best.
“The goal this week is to go beat Indiana at its home course,” coach Pat Goss said. “Indiana and Iowa are probably the two best teams in the Big Ten right now, so if we could go beat Indiana, that’d be big.”
The Wildcats have played solid golf to start the spring season, winning the Big Ten Match Play Championship and the Rice Intercollegiate in its first two starts before finishing a respectable 7th place against a strong 16-team field at the Barona Collegiate Cup.
The team, led by senior Eric Chun, knows that it must keep its eye on the task at hand if it wants to continue performing well.
“If we stay focused, we can play great golf,” Chun said. “The key is that we have to play with confidence.”
Chun has been the most consistent player in the fall and spring seasons. The senior has finished in the top-two on four occasions and currently carries a 70.57 season scoring average in 21 rounds played during the fall and spring seasons.
“Eric Chun has turned into one of those elite level players that your team really thrives off of in college golf,” Goss said. “As a teammate, it’s pretty comforting to go play every day and know that this guy is going to shoot 69, 70, 71.”
The return of junior Nick Losole has also been a key this spring. After missing much of the fall due to a back injury, Losole has returned to the course playing good golf. The junior went 3-0-1 at the Big Ten Match Play Championship and finished 9th at the Rice Intercollegiate. He said he is confident with where his game is at and believes that if the team stays focused on the immediate goal, they should be fine.
“Sometimes you get ahead of yourself and it gets you anxious out there and you end up performing worse,” Losole said. “It’s important that each member of the team goes through the process, takes one shot at a time and doesn’t get anxious out on the course.”
The team has played well so far this spring and, as Goss notes, the team is much improved from the fall, especially with Losole’s return. Still, Goss said he is not totally satisfied with the team. There is still much room for improvement for a team hoping to win a Big Ten title this month.
“We have a lot of good things going, but we haven’t necessarily put it altogether yet,” Goss said. “I feel like we have a good enough team that if we continue to get better over the next three weeks we’re going to have an opportunity to win a Big Ten Championship.”
