Men’s Golf

The Midwest golf grind continues for the Wildcats this weekend, as the team heads to West Lafayette, Indiana, to take on a field of teams throughout the area in the Boilermaker Invitational.

Northwestern is looking to carry its momentum from an impressive second round in the Kepler Invitational at Ohio State into this weekend’s tournament, while also preparing for the upcoming Big Ten Tournament.

“The Boilermaker this week is a pretty big tournament for us,” sophomore Dylan Wu said. “We had a really good round the last day at Ohio State, and we just need to have that momentum going into the last two tournaments because this is a critical part of our schedule.”

Despite playing in tough conditions in Columbus, Ohio, the Cats shot the best round of any team on the Sunday of that tournament, with Wu leading the way and shooting even par.

Although the entire team turned in better rounds than they did the day before, senior Andrew Whalen continued to struggle, shooting an eight-over par 79, only one stroke better than the previous day’s 80 and finished with the team’s worst result.

“I had a really poor week last week, so I just kind of went back to the basics,” Whalen said. “I tried to start fresh, get the bad stuff out of my head. The combination of the weather being really bad and having just a bad week golf-wise, it just kind of escalated into pretty high golf scores.”

Fortunately for Whalen and the rest of the team, the weather forecast for West Lafayette over the weekend is much better than last weekend’s snow and wind in Columbus.

NU, however, isn’t taking anything for granted and continues to prepare for any conditions.

“I worked on being able to control my ball better,” Wu said. “In the Midwest you get a lot of wind — the weather’s a bit unpredictable — so being able to control your ball and knowing how to control it into the wind, we did a lot of that.”

The Cats will certainly need that ball control this week, because their competition has improved as well, as No. 2 Illinois headlines the field.

Senior Josh Jamieson continued his impressive play on and around the greens this month at Ohio State and will look to fine tune his game this weekend.

“I’m just sort of staying on top of everything,” Jamieson said. “I’ve got to make sure my short game stays in the same place, going through the same sort of putting drills to keep that fresh. The main area of focus I’m trying to improve on is really my long game, mid-irons and woods, primarily.”

Although Jamieson’s putting stroke has remained consistent despite the tough conditions, the team’s overall focus in the interim has been on the short game.

The team’s practice week was filled with chipping and putting contests, including one contest that cycled the players through shots of increasing difficulty in and around the green in order to prepare them to recover from mistakes.

“In the Midwest, the scores aren’t going to be really low,” Wu said. “It’s going to be the people that get up and down and scramble and save a lot of pars that are going to play well.”

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