Two Indiana University golfers found a gamechanging fix to back pain. What can others learn?

Their ribs repaired, the two return with a story that might spark a lightbulb moment for many.

For as long as Clay Merchent slogged through injury – patching his golf game together with physical therapy and ice baths while searching for a meaningful diagnosis – his painstaking comeback from a left rib surgery reached a landmark point in a most mundane location. The Merchents, from Noblesville, Indiana, were at a family wedding in Colorado earlier this summer when a golf simulator bar caught the eye of Clay and his dad Mike.

Clay’s career, temporarily shelved 21 months earlier, had played out on the biggest stages. He was a Drive, Chip and Putt National Finalist, won AJGA events, contended at the Sage Valley Junior Invitational and Western Junior and arrived at Indiana University in the fall of 2020 as a top in-state recruit.

But Clay, named Big Ten Freshman of the Year in 2021, has not been seen in a college golf event since Sept. 27, 2022. After his breakout freshman season, a nagging injury became debilitating. Months went by before a doctor could not only connect the persistent pain he was feeling in his back and shoulder with a problem in his ribs but also repair it.

That day in the simulator, eight months post-op, Clay, now 22, hit more full golf shots than he had since undergoing the procedure – dozens of them, pain-free, for hours. A once-uncertain comeback materialized before him.

“It was a eureka moment. It was like OK, it’s ready, let’s go do this thing,” Clay said. “I played my first nine holes that very next day when we got back home.”

He finished T-6 at the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur and T-4 at the Indianapolis City Amateur in preparation for the fall college season.

Ethan Chelf, Clay’s teammate at Indiana, knows something of his slog, having gone through it himself. The 21-year-old has also been sidelined from competition for much of the past two years. He can trace his back pain to a single event that began an equally drawn-out road to the right diagnosis.

Ethan suffered many of the same symptoms as Clay but found a solution at the West Virginia University Medicine Heart and Vascular Institute when he met thoracic surgeon Dr. Adam Hansen, a leading expert in Slipping Rib Syndrome. Hansen performed surgery on both men to treat the condition, likening the procedure to Tommy John surgery for baseball players.

Their ribs repaired, Clay and Ethan enter a redshirt junior season at Indiana with a story that might spark a lightbulb moment for anyone experiencing similar pain.

‘Waiting for the guillotine to fall’

When Clay’s pain was at its worst, he felt like he had almost no control over the left side of his body. Forget swinging a golf club.

“It shut down and there really was no muscling through it. I would take the club back and I would just collapse,” said Clay, who plays right-handed. “My left side would not move or respond the way I had intended it to.”

Nagging pain in his lower left lat was a reality of high school and early college golf. It would flare up about once a month, and when it did, he knew he could manage it with an ice bath and a day off. Intermittent pain just became part of the equation and it was manageable until the pace picked up his sophomore season at Indiana.

“It started to bother me earlier in the season, and this time it wasn’t going away,” he said. “My tricks of the trade were not really getting it to settle down.”

At the NCAA Regional in Palm Beach Gardens in mid-May 2022, the pain hit a new level. For the first time, the sensation was like a knife, twisting, in his ribs. The pain started under his left shoulder blade, extended to his ribs and down into his hand, fingers and toes. He withdrew after the first round.

Clay focused on rehab that summer and didn’t play a tournament for two months. In late September 2022, in his second start with the team at the Northwestern-hosted Windon Memorial in Chicago, the intense pain returned. Clay limped in with a final-round 83.

In the team van on the drive back to campus in Bloomington, Indiana, Clay remembers staring out at Lake Michigan, questioning whether he’d just played his last competitive round. He was frustrated that the fix he thought he’d cobbled together through physical therapy – after numerous doctor visits, bone scans, x-rays and MRIs – was no longer working.

“It was hard on him mentally because he wanted to do it,” Mike Merchent said of Clay’s continued efforts to play the game, “but it was like he was waiting for the guillotine to fall. He just knew it was only going to last for so long.”

Clay Merchent during the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur in August. (Photo by Landon Ringler/Golfweek)
Clay Merchent during the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur in August. (Photo by Landon Ringler/Golfweek)

Down the rib rabbit hole

Ethan, at 6-feet-6-inches tall, had weathered growing pains in high school – particularly after a large growth spurt as an upperclassman. The Maryland native was a top recruit from the Mid-Atlantic area who arrived at Indiana in the fall of 2021. In January 2022, however, he was towel-drying his hair in his dorm room when his back seized up.

When Ethan’s father Brett Chelf was in college, he had suffered spontaneous lung collapses. Knowing there was a hereditary component to this, Ethan immediately called an athletic trainer about his pain.

“Every breath I take is kind of getting shorter, I can barely move, I can barely get my seatbelt on to come see you,” Ethan told the trainer.

X-rays ruled out a lung collapse, but while there, the trainer mentioned that Ethan might have a rib rotation – a foreign concept to Ethan, especially since he felt the pain in his mid-right back. He shared the thought with his dad, and they continued to look for solutions.

Ethan Chelf (standing) caddied for teammate Clay Merchent at the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur after a shoulder injury sidelined Chelf from the event. (Photo by Landon Ringler/Golfweek)
Ethan Chelf (standing) caddied for teammate Clay Merchent at the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur after a shoulder injury sidelined Chelf from the event. (Photo by Landon Ringler/Golfweek)

Through soft-tissue treatment, Ethan was able to return to competition in the spring of 2022. Still, the pain never fully subsided, even after prolotherapy and a round of PRP.

“It would feel OK a day or two and then it would come back to where it was almost a new norm for me,” he said. “You know golf, if you’re a degree off, that’s a lot of yards. It’s kind of hard to play when you’re hurt.”

Ethan finally hung up his clubs in July of 2022 to focus on addressing his pain, either through rest or more doctor visits. That initial comment from the Indiana trainer, however, had led his dad “pretty deep down the rib rotation wormhole.” A Facebook group for people with similar pain eventually led Brett Chelf to Hansen, and thus to a breakthrough for both families.

“A lot of the symptoms people were talking about and symptoms that I read about matched [Ethan’s], so I started looking into doctors who knew about slipping rib,” Brett said.

Through the process, Brett couldn’t help but think of the likely statistics.

“The fact that you have two guys on the same golf team of 10 guys that both have this and both had it surgically repaired says to us that there are probably tons out there that have it.”

A large number of the Slipping Rib Syndrome patients Hansen sees are athletes whose sports involve an asymmetric move, like swinging a golf club or a baseball bat. Recreational golfers who experience side pain that becomes progressively more severe after picking up the sport – to the point that they quit the game – is what Hansen calls a classic presentation of the condition.

Hansen has pinpointed ribs Nos. 8-10 as the ones susceptible to Slipping Rib Syndrome. Those ribs are attached to one another by ligaments.

“If those ligaments tear, then you get the ability of one or more of those ribs to basically hang freely in the front and become a floating rib when they’re supposed to be attached.

“If they come loose and become floating, they now have the ability to pop in and out, back and forth, slide around – where they once were firmly connected. When they do that, they pinch and compress or impinge upon nerves that lie between each of the ribs.”

Those nerves beneath the ribs, called intercostal nerves, are not only powerful and sensitive, they control everything from the bottom of the neck down to the pelvis. Thus, a slipped rib can create a wide array of symptoms.

Initially, it was tough for Ethan to accept that a rib injury may be causing his back pain. That apprehension faded away as Hansen so accurately and specifically described his pain during a November 2022 consultation.

“I told (Hansen) going in I had back pain but didn’t really specify where. He had traced it back to pretty much pinpointing where my pain was on my back,” Ethan remembers of his first visit with Hansen. “I was like, that’s the wildest thing.”

He underwent surgery on March 8, 2023.

Clay arrived in Hansen’s office in August 2023 and described Hansen’s initial evaluation and the spot-on explanation of his pain in almost exactly the same way. If there was a solution, Clay decided, Hansen had it.

He booked his surgery for Nov. 1, 2023.

From left, Brett Chelf and Ethan Chelf with Dr. Adam Hansen and his wife Lisa Hansen. (Photo courtesy Brett Chelf)
From left, Brett Chelf and Ethan Chelf with Dr. Adam Hansen and his wife Lisa Hansen. (Photo courtesy Brett Chelf)

‘I didn’t fall in love with golf by hitting 15 balls a day’

Hansen has never found Slipping Rib Syndrome in a textbook. It is difficult to diagnose not only because the condition causes pain in other areas of the body, but because most imaging studies do not show the slipped ribs. Hansen consults only a CT scan before visiting with patients.

The persistent nature of Slipping Rib Syndrome pain, as well as the difficulty in diagnosing it, leads many patients, Hansen has observed, to develop significant anxiety and depression. It’s a reality that has driven Hansen’s efforts to educate the medical community about symptoms and treatment.

Over the course of six years and 700 cases, Hansen has blazed a trail to an effective repair technique.

“Now we have a really nice operation that is not just suturing the ribs up,” Hansen said. “We’ve spaced the ribs out, we do a much better reconstruction. It puts them back to like the normal shape that they should have been.”

For two college golfers itching to get back to the game, however, the recovery from that surgery unfolded slowly.

For the first three months after his surgery, Ethan was not allowed to carry anything over 20 pounds, much less swing a golf club. Still, he found ways to pass the time while watching his teammates play golf. He would often walk with a Perfect Putter, dropping balls on lines to work on AimPoint. He also doubled down on schoolwork, finishing his undergraduate degrees in finance and accounting in three years so he could begin an MBA program.

Three months post-surgery, he had wedges in his hands. But at six months, when the 2023-24 golf season began, Ethan was nowhere near where he imagined he’d be. He had been cleared for bodyweight lifting but simply pressing his weight into his legs one day in the gym made him feel like he’d been hit in the back with a hammer.

Hansen reassured Ethan he was still on track, and Ethan scaled back. He played his first 18-hole rounds on a spring break trip to Florida. The rib injury now an afterthought, Ethan suffered another gutwrenching setback over the summer when he dislocated his left shoulder while swimming. He remains confident he’ll be able to get close enough to 100 percent to compete in the fall.

Clay, learning from Ethan’s experience, reached that day in the simulator a few months faster. But there were still moments in the first six months post-op when reality didn’t match the image Clay had in his head. Everything golf-related felt measured, and his golf swing itself seemed robotic and overthought.

“I didn’t fall in love with golf by hitting 15 balls a day,” he said. “It was the freedom of going out, hitting balls and playing and chipping and putting and thinking your day is over and then going out to play an extra nine. It just wasn’t like that anymore.”

Ethan Chelf, far left, and Clay Merchent, far right, as spectators at the 2024 Big Ten Championship. (Photo courtesy Brett Chelf)
Ethan Chelf, far left, and Clay Merchent, far right, as spectators at the 2024 Big Ten Championship. (Photo courtesy Brett Chelf)

Both men – with two years of remaining college eligibility each – spoke of professional golf careers with cautious optimism. The desire remains if their bodies and games hold up.

There are things about the recovery process that the two men, now roommates, know only the other one will understand, like being outside the game itself for so long. Clay also knows that if Ethan and his dad didn’t solve the riddle first, the comeback he’s riding doesn’t even exist.

“We were talking about it like, the competing is great, but going out there for an evening nine? We were dreaming about it, like how nice would that be?” Ethan said. “. . . When it’s stripped away from you, you definitely long for it a little more.”

In the wake of a grueling comeback lies a positive perspective.

Jake Cesare wins Division I-dominant Golfweek Hoosier Amateur, then it’s back to 12th grade

Jake Cesare had other business to attend to when the doors opened at Westfield High School on Thursday.

Jake Cesare couldn’t put it off any longer. On Friday morning, the 17-year-old reported to the first day of his senior year at Westfield (Indiana) High School. He was a day late.

Cesare had other business to attend to when the doors opened at Westfield on Thursday. After two rounds of the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur, Cesare was two shots off the lead in a field largely made up of Division I players at the Pfau Course at Indiana University. He pulled away with a final-round 5-under 66.

At 6 under for 54 holes, nobody else was even close. Ben Cors, a senior on the University of Dayton roster, was runner-up at 1 under. Three players, two of whom also appear on Division I rosters, finished tied for second at even par.

Scores: Golfweek Hoosier Amateur

Cesare cried no tears of sentiment about missing the pomp and circumstance of back-to-school. Shortly after downing a cheeseburger and fries to celebrate his win, he declared, “I’m happy. Definitely made the right decision to come down and play this tournament and miss the first day.”

Cesare found out the timeline about a week ago when his dad told him he’d be in Bloomington instead of Westfield when school started.

“I’m like, ‘Nice, missing the first day,” he said.

Jake Cesare with the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur trophy. (Photo by Landon Ringler/Golfweek)
Jake Cesare with the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur trophy. (Photo by Landon Ringler/Golfweek)

Just as the start of senior year of high school marks a transition point for most people, Cesare’s Hoosier Amateur win marks one for him. Cesare, who will turn 18 on Aug. 17, last won a golf tournament in the fall of 2023. It was an Indiana Golf Foundation Fall Series Event at Coyote Crossing Golf Club in West Lafayette – in other words, a junior golf tournament.

The Hoosier Amateur is Cesare’s first amateur win. He recognized a few names in the field, but this was largely a new crowd.

Asked how he felt he stacked up after 54 holes, Cesare said he felt like he had every bit the talent.

“I know I’m just as good,” he said. “I just feel like I need to put three good solid rounds together.”

Cesare, who works on his swing with Brad Fellers at Prairie View Golf Club in Carmel, Indiana, is confident off the tee and a good driver of the golf ball. He has accuracy and distance, and in the final round, his putter got hot. He needed only 26 putts total, 10 of which were one-putts.

The 66 Cesare posted in the final round is one shot higher than his lowest competitive score, which he shot in 2020 at a qualifier for the Notah Begay Junior Golf National Championship. For the week, Cesare only had one double bogey. He hit his drive through the fairway on the par-4 11th in Round 2, but he got redemption with a final-round birdie there.

Cesare’s 6-under total sets a new 54-hole record for the Hoosier Amateur. Last year, Nick Piesen won at 5 under just a few weeks before starting his freshman season at Indiana.

“I just felt like I was the underdog this week,” Cesare said. “I had no pressure on myself, had nothing to lose.”

His Hoosier Amateur title may bust that underdog status, especially considering that he’ll be ranked in the World Amateur Golf Ranking after this tournament.

Jake Cesare at The Pfau Course at Indiana University. (Photo by Landon Ringler/Golfweek)
Jake Cesare at The Pfau Course at Indiana University. (Photo by Landon Ringler/Golfweek)

The Pfau is about to hear a lot more from him, too. Last spring, Cesare verbally committed to play for Indiana University. He’ll join older brother Alec on the roster there next year after Alec transferred in from Ball State to start his sophomore season. Indiana is the family school for the Cesares. Jake and Alec’s parents both attended there, too.

“It’s going to be fun playing with Alec,” he said. “I spent two years of high school golf playing with him and it was a lot of fun. Hopefully, it’s the same way in college.”

Hoosier Amateur back for 4th year at Indiana’s The Pfau Golf Course

Summer golf is approaching, and Golfweek is revisiting some of its top venues.

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Summer golf is here, and Golfweek is keeping one of its amateur events going. For the fourth year, the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur will again be played at The Pfau Golf Course at Indiana University. The event will be a 54-hole event and will be ranked in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. There will be a men’s and women’s division.

Past winners

MEN

2022 – Nels Surtani

2021 – Taichi Kho

2020 – Tommy Kuhl

WOMEN

2022 – Siarra Stout

2021 – Eleanor Hudepohl

2020 – Erica Shepherd

Fourth annual Golfweek Hoosier Amateur

August 8-10
The Pfau Course, Bloomington, Indiana

Siarra Stout wins 2022 Golfweek Hoosier Amateur, sets big goals for final year of college

“I’m going to be really old,” Stout said of an impending sixth year of college golf at Lipscomb.

Siarra Stout is in a season of second chances in her golf life.

“I’m going to be really old,” Stout said of an impending sixth year of college golf at Lipscomb, “but I’ve got one more year.”

In 2015, Stout became the first commit for the upstart Charlotte women’s golf program. Last fall, she transferred to Lipscomb to finish out two remaining years of eligibility left over from a redshirt season and a COVID year.

At Lipscomb, she won her first college tournament at the Rivertowne Invitational in March 2021. This week, she picked up the title at the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur, played on the teethy Pfau Course at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Stout was 10 over for 54 holes and edged Jocelyn Bruch, a redshirt sophomore at Purdue, by a shot. Things got dangerously close over the back nine at Pfau as Stout made three bogeys after the turn, but a birdie at the par-4 16th helped lift her permanently ahead of Bruch.

“Anything can happen on this golf course but I think it just helped me kind of keep my poise as I finished off 17 and 18,” she said of that well-timed birdie.

Pfau is demanding off the tee, and Stout met that challenge by leaving herself in good positions from which to approach tricky greens. A heavy rain soaked the course after the second round, leaving the greens more receptive but the course playing longer. Still, Stout had to concentrate on placement.

And one reality remained: “Above the hole, if you were chipping, it was no bueno.”

Leading up to the Hoosier Amateur, Stout played a U.S. Women’s qualifier at Old Fort Golf Club in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, but came up four shots short of a playoff to make the field. Two years ago this week, Stout was making her U.S. Women’s Amateur debut at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Maryland. After close calls in qualifying the previous two years, she earned her spot in the field thanks to her position in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. In 2020, COVID forced the USGA to wipe out qualifying and select a field by hand.

Stout still has flashbacks to that week and is grateful for the opportunity. Lately, she’s taken a position of gratitude for many elements of her game and the experiences it has afforded her.

“I know (golf) doesn’t define me as a person and I really rest in that now for the first time,” she said.

Maybe it’s that mindset that has allowed Stout to thrive at Lipscomb. In 10 tournaments, she never finished outside the top 25 and led the team in scoring with a 74.7 average.

Stout is a big goal setter, and has her sights set on an NCAA postseason berth before her eligibility is up. Charlotte missed advancing as a team by a single shot when she was a sophomore and when she was a junior, COVID cut short the season when the 49ers were ranked inside the top 25 in the country. Last season, Stout was second individually at the Atlantic Sun Conference Championship. An individual title would have given her a postseason berth.

And after that? Stout is leaving the next step open. She’s always envisioned a professional golf career following college, but she didn’t enter LPGA Q-School this year. If she feels like her game is in a good place in another year, she still thinks she might go that route, but she also hasn’t missed the influx of youth into college coaching of late. That’s an attractive option, too.

“I don’t know when in my season of life that I would maybe go and step into that for a little bit but I definitely think it’s a neat place to go and make an impact on people’s lives and kind of grow them more than just a player – as a person,” she said. “My heart is definitely more toward that side of things just from a ministry standpoint.

“So who knows where I’ll end up after this year.”

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After Jon Rahm-inspired swing epiphany, Nels Surtani wins Golfweek Hoosier Amateur in Pfau marathon

The Purdue junior got it done after five playoff holes.

From the final group of the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur on Aug. 10, Nels Surtani had the benefit of watching the third round unfold ahead of him. Surtani, who had taken the 36-hole lead with a second-round 68, knew exactly what he needed to do to make a playoff coming down the final hole of the Pfau Course at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, so he made the necessary 6-footer – a downhill left-to-right breaker – for a final-round 73. That put him at 2 over for 54 holes and forced a playoff.

The sun dropped lower and lower as Surtani, who will be a junior at Purdue, battled with incoming Indiana freshman Cal Hoskins, who had posted a final-round 71 to catch Surtani. After three extra holes, there still wasn’t a winner.

“At this point after the third playoff hole, I was really tired and my yardages, my clubs were starting to go shorter,” Surtani said. “I could tell I was getting fatigued and I really had to concentrate to stay in it.”

On the fourth extra hole, the par-4 10th, Hoskins lost his drive in the woods but chipped in for par. Surtani missed a birdie putt to win and the pair went on. Surtani finally closed out Hoskins on the fifth extra hole.

Surtani will take his hardware home to Noblesville, Indiana, before heading back to Purdue later this month, but Hoskins gets to take on the Pfau challenge over and over again.

“I’m really excited to play it a lot because I feel like that’s just kind of what you need – something that’s really difficult,” he said of the Hoosiers’ home course. “It definitely beat me up in the brain for three days straight.”

Surtani, who finished T-47 two years at the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur, is on a two-tournament winning streak, having picked up his first-ever amateur title last month at the Northern Amateur. Where his game is concerned, he had something of an epiphany last summer while scrolling Instagram, and it all started with Jon Rahm.

In answering a question about his uniquely compact swing, Rahm revealed that he was born with a club foot. It was a big headline in the run-up to the 2021 British Open, and it had Surtani’s attention. He could relate, having also been born with a club foot. His left leg is an inch shorter than his right.

“We always knew my left leg was shorter, but we never attributed that to any of the issues I had in my swing,” Surtani said, explaining that for years he had gotten stuck on the inside on his downswing.

Surtani loves to read about the golf swing, so he spent a few days observing Rahm and studying. After some trial and error, he began lifting his left heel before he swings. It was a simple move that brought big change.

“It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done as far as in my golf game,” he said. “Just started to become more confident and hitting better shots.”

Surtani hasn’t worked with a swing instructor for more than two years, and lifting his left heel is the most significant change he’s made to his swing in that time. Purdue head coach Rob Bradley will give him a tip now and then, but mostly Surtani has been navigating his swing by himself lately. He’s worked hard on his chipping over the past year, and it’s another big reason for the results he’s seeing now – that, and mental game.

“I don’t feel like I’m a better ballstriker or longer than I have been in the past year but I’ve become more confident in my game this past year,” he said. “I feel like I turned a corner this summer, for sure.”

Surtani won the Northern Amateur wire to wire and called it one of the best tournaments he’s played in his career. But at the Pfau Course for the Hoosier Amateur, he didn’t feel like he had his best game.

The Steve Smyers-designed Pfau Course, which opened in June 2020, can be exhausting.

“It’s just every hole is a potential double-bogey and you have to be very conscious of where you hit your shot, where you miss it,” he said.

Surtani last played this course during the fall of 2020, when the college golf season was shut down amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn’t a great week.

“It was a good comeback,” Surtani said of his return.

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At Golfweek Hoosier Amateur, Indiana’s Pfau Course plays tough as billed

The new Pfau Course at Indiana University has teeth, and it showed them to a field of college-age amateurs at the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur.

Erica Shepherd knows difficult greens. A year and a half ago, she finished T-23 at the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur with a final-round 75 on that jewel of the south.

So when Shepherd, winner of this weekend’s Golfweek Hoosier Amateur, says that the new Pfau Course at Indiana University is the hardest course she’s played since Augusta National, it means something.

“I think the only thing that makes it not as hard is it has zoysia fairways,” she said. “You always have a good lie in the fairways and chipping is not too bad.”

Before Pfau, the last time Shepherd and her older brother Ethan , a senior at Indiana, played in the same tournament, they were just kids – maybe 10 years old, Erica guesses. But for the Shepherd family, there was competition within the competition this weekend at Pfau. They had matching 75s in the first round of the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur, but Erica took off from there.

Her closing 69 was at least two shots better than any other player in the women’s field on Sunday, and the only sub-70 score posted. She finished the week 2 over, a winner by five shots.

Golfweek Hooser Amateur Scores: Men | Women

Erica had the advantage of seeing the Pfau Course shortly after it opened this summer. Ethan invited her down to play, and it turned into a match with a few of his teammates.

“We actually ended up getting in some arguments on what I should hit,” she joked. Erica remembers facing a 180-yard shot and Ethan trying to convince her to take three clubs less. She wasn’t having it.

But that’s the kind of strategy Pfau demands.

Erica Shepherd
Erica Shepherd

“At least 70 percent of the greens work front to back so the first five yards before the green is above the green,” Erica said after the final round of the Hoosier Amateur. “There were some shots, at least three of our holes today, where I played a number like 40 yards less than the pin. You can kind of run it up there. If you land on the green, you’ll go over the green and front is a much easier chip.”

For the first time in months, Erica stood over putts at the Pfau Course and felt like they had a chance to go in. Putting has been a year-long struggle, she said, and she felt it particularly at the U.S. Women’s Amateur. She missed the match-play cut by one after two days of beautiful ball-striking and weeks of thorough preparation.

“I couldn’t even tell you how many putts I had, how many inside-3-footers I missed,” she said.

Annabelle Pancake, a fellow Indiana native, tied for third eight shots behind Shepherd at the Hoosier Amateur. How hard did the course play? The Clemson freshman had a first-round 80. Credit her for rebounding with subsequent rounds of 71-72.

“I just didn’t hit the ball well and had what felt like 100 three-putts,” she said of that opening 18.

Pancake says Pfau is a course where you have to keep it in play. It’s a course best described with big adjectives: a monster, crazy and very difficult, but very cool.

More: Pfau Course a silver lining for Hoosiers without fall play

It certainly will show you what you need to work on and expose a player who goes in without a game plan.

“If you hit a bad shot, it’s going to show,” she said. “If you hit it off-line, you’re probably going to get a bad kick. A lot of the greens were really difficult, they were running really fast this week, they had a lot of undulation in them as well.”

In the men’s division, Illinois junior Tommy Kuhl kept a level head to finish on top. After 36 holes on Saturday, Kuhl had a two-shot advantage on a group of three players. His closing 77 left him with a two-shot win at 5 over.

Tommy Kuhl
Tommy Kuhl

“I think it says a lot about the course and the potential the course does have,” Kuhl said of those numbers. “It’s a championship-style course but personally I love tournaments like this that are very difficult and par is a good score. I like grinding it out. The course, it was awesome.”

Kuhl won for the first time since claiming the Illinois Junior Amateur the summer before his freshman year of college. Twice before in his Illinois career, Kuhl had built a 36-hole individual lead but was unable to close.

“I think looking back on those and using those to my advantage today was very beneficial,” he said.

For Joe Weiler, a Bloomington, Indiana, native who plays for Purdue, a T-6 finish at Pfau was solid but left him wanting a little more. Still, Weiler wasn’t at all surprised to see a winning score over par after 54 holes.

Weiler had played Pfau twice in the summer, when it was a completely different golf course because of wetter, softer conditions. Colder weather firmed up the place, and that was particularly noticeable on the greens.

“It was fun because you had to think around every shot,” he said. “The best player is going to win there. You have to hit a lot of different shots.”

Weiler knows something about difficulty, considering that Purdue’s home golf course is the challenging Kampen course in West Lafayette, Indiana.

“It’s just being over shots that are difficult and you gotta think about,” Weiler said. “IU this year has a huge upgrade with that course.”

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Midwest natives Tommy Kuhl, Erica Shepherd lead Golfweek Hoosier Amateur

Two Midwest natives, Tommy Kuhl and Erica Shepherd, took the lead at the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur.

Tommy Kuhl was careful to take note of the wind as he played a late nine at the Pfau Course at Indiana University the day before the Golfweek Hoosier Amateur. Kuhl played the front, but only got to walk the back nine at the new course in Bloomington, Indiana.

“It’s a beautiful course, it’s a big course. A championship-style course,” said Kuhl, an Illinois junior who is leading the tournament after a double-round Saturday. “The thing I notice that’s unique about it is it flows with the wind really well. That’s one thing I really examined when I got there.”

In a prevailing southwest wind, Kuhl managed to leave himself in good positions around firm new greens and get to 1 under for 36 holes. He’s the only player on the men’s leaderboard who managed to get under par.

Short game has been something Kuhl has devoted time to recently. He didn’t need to be creative with his shots on Saturday because he was smart with his approaches.

Leaderboard: Men | Women

“Especially with how new and firm the course is, I think it’s just about being patient, especially on a 36-hole day,” Kuhl said of the key to his good play. “I knew coming into today it would be a brutal long day with how hilly the course is and how cold and windy it was.”

Kuhl leads a group of three players by two shots, including Connor Glynn, Varun Chopra and Nick Tenuta.

Kuhl got in the double-round-day mindset when he competed in a two-day Golf Coaches Association of America event at the University of Illinois Golf Club in Champaign, Illinois, last month. He also kept it sharp over the summer, competing in local Midwest events but also traveling to Arizona for the Saguaro Amateur and to South Carolina for the Palmetto Amateur.

As a Big 10 player, it will be up to Kuhl to keep his season alive this fall. There won’t be team events, so Kuhl is testing himself this way.

“At Illinois, we always try and keep it competitive,” he said. “Coach (Mike Small) kind of keeps it up to us of what we want to do to get our game better. For me, personally, that was playing in tournaments.”

Erica Shepherd, a Duke sophomore, is in the same boat in the ACC. Shepherd fired rounds of 75-71 to finish the day at 4 over and take the lead in the girls division. Last month, Shepherd, an Indiana native, finished third at the Golfweek Caledonia Amateur.

Ashley Kozlowski trails by two shots and Emma Carpenter is in third another shot back.

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