Northwestern is headed to the Pacific Northwest after a monthlong break Monday to continue its already successful spring campaign.

The Wildcats will compete for the first time in the 18-team Redhawk Invitational, hosted by Seattle University and held at Chambers Bay Golf Course, host of the 2015 U.S. Open. The tournament will give the team a chance to showcase the skills it has been practicing throughout the winter and serves as a homecoming for senior Andrew Whalen and junior Dylan Wu, who both hail from the Pacific Northwest.

“The impetus behind heading out to Chambers Bay was Andrew Whalen, who’s a fifth-year senior from Washington, and Dylan Wu, another guy from Oregon, so we wanted to get a tournament at some point back home for those guys,” coach David Inglis said. “Playing at a U.S. Open venue in Chambers Bay, it seemed like it was a great fit.”

One month ago, the Cats nearly recorded their third tournament victory of the season at the Desert Mountain Intercollegiate in Arizona, but finished in second place at the 12-team tournament.

NU finished two strokes shy of Michigan, but sophomore Ryan Lumsden said the Cats learned valuable lessons for future tournaments.

“We were really good at that tournament,” Lumsden said. “We really learned from coming down that stretch at the end and we didn’t quite get the job done, but that was a lot of good golf played.”

One of the most encouraging signs at the last tournament was the play of freshman Everton Hawkins. Hawkins competed as an individual — his score did not count for team considerations — in Arizona, but he shot a 67 in one round, the lowest round of anyone on the team thus far, and finished tied for sixth place out of 66 competitors. Inglis said due to that performance and his progress throughout the year, Hawkins has earned a spot in Monday’s lineup and could stay there going forward.

In the month since the Desert Mountain Invitational, the Cats worked on their games over an intensive spring break trip to South Carolina and have had more opportunities to play outdoors as the weather in Evanston has improved.

“We’re moving in the right direction; we’re just continuing to need to be a little more consistent,” Wu said. “In Arizona we had a really good chance of winning there. It shows that we’re in good form and we just need to keep working. We know that when we’re playing well we can compete against any team in the country.”

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