Check out who’s in the running for player of the year in men’s college golf in 2023.
The postseason is underway in men’s college golf, and after the NCAA Regionals, the NCAA Div. I Men’s Golf Championship field is set for May 26-31 at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona.
With that, the race for the 2023 Haskins Award presented by Stifel is starting to heat up.
A handful of players have made their case throughout the season as front-runners for the Haskins Award, which honors the player of the year in men’s college golf, as selected by college golfers, coaches and members of the college golf media.
Tommy Kuhl had a whirlwind of emotions Monday in the span of a few hours.
The fifth-year senior at Illinois has been one of the best college golfers in the country this season, and he continued that play at Illini Country Club in Springfield, Illinois, at a U.S. Open local qualifier. On aerated greens, he shot a course-record 62 to easily lock up medalist honors and move on to final qualifying.
At least that is what he thought when his final putt dropped.
However, as Ryan French of Monday Q Info reported, Kuhl went back to watch some of his fellow Illini teammates finish their rounds. He was talking with Jackson Buchanan, and he mentioned how difficult it was to putt on the aerated greens. That’s when something clicked in Kuhl’s mind.
“I felt sick to my stomach,” Kuhl told French. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t tell the rules official.”
Kuhl had repaired aeration marks multiple times during his round, which isn’t allowed. Had a local rule been in place Monday, he would’ve been fine.
“I should know better. It comes down to me. I should know that rule.”
Kuhl immediately found a rules official, explaining what happened. Soon after, he was informed he had been disqualified.
Others who played in the local qualifier also admitted to fixing aeration marks, but none who advanced to the next stage.
For Kuhl, it cost him a chance to play in the U.S. Open. However, coming clean is something he should be commended for.
Check out who’s in the running for men’s college golfer of the year.
With every passing week, the men’s college golf season creeps closer to the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The Haskins Award announced Friday its first spring watch list, featuring 15 of the best men’s college golfers this season. Gordon Sargent, a sophomore at Vanderbilt who has risen to No. 2 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, is having a stellar season, but there are plenty of other big names in contention.
The Haskins Award honors the player of the year in college men’s golf, as selected by college golfers, coaches and members of the college golf media. The players are listed alphabetically. Players on the Haskins Award Watch List were selected by a panel of Golfweek and Golf Channel reporters.
Illinois has raced out to an 11-shot lead at American Dunes Golf Club.
Illinois has raced out to an 11-shot lead at American Dunes Golf Club in Grand Haven, Michigan, in the inaugural Folds of Honor Collegiate.
Adrien Dumont de Chassart, Tommy Kuhl, and Piercen Hunt all shot 3-under 69s for the Fightin’ Illini while Jackson Buchanan shot a 2-under 70. Illinois is 7 under and 36 holes and the only team under par.
“That’s what we look for. That’s Illini golf. We closed effectively. … it was good to see,” said Mike Small, head coach of Illinois.
Senior Tommy Kuhl made just one bogey on his card Tuesday and has just three bogeys this week.
“I hit it really solid today,” said Kuhl. “I put myself in the right spots and played solid golf. I knew the conditions going into today were going to be pretty difficult and I know at this golf course, you’ve got to put it in the right spots to score well, and that’s what I did.”
Florida State is in second heading into Wednesday’s final round at 4 over. Liberty and Arizona are tied for third at 7 over. Kansas is solo fifth at 9 over.
“We came out, we got on it pretty early. We got off to a good start which helps. We hadn’t done that in the last event (Olympia Fields). It definitely helps to come out strong and we carried the momentum into the back-nine and finished well,” said Kuhl.
Despite the big lead heading into the final round, Coach Small says their mentality stays the same.
“Tomorrow is zero-zero. Let’s go play golf. Have that same look we had today and play Illini’ golf,” said Smalls.
Last week, Illinois hosted the Fightin’ Illini Invitational and finished in second place, behind Stanford.
“At Olympia Fields we didn’t close like we wanted to, but today we did, and that’s progress,” said Smalls.
Florida State’s Brian Roberts and Liberty’s Jonathan Yaun are tied atop the individual leaderboard at 6 under. Yaun, who led after Day 1, has posted back-to-back rounds of 69.
Roberts, after he shot 70 in the first round, kept his rhythm, and shot a 4-under 68 on Tuesday. Through two rounds of golf, the Seminole junior is 7 under on the par 5’s. He eagled the 6th on Tuesday after hitting the green in two shots.
“That was the only one I went for. The rest has been just a lot of wedges and hitting some good shots, close in there,” said Roberts.
Playing a tournament at the Folds of Honor course is significant to Small.
“I think it’s a great educational experience,“ he said. ”I think it’s great for the kids to see this and learn more about the Folds of Honor organization so that they can rally behind it at an early age. You need young people to do that, to foster that. We’d like to win, play well tomorrow, and finish it off, but that’s not the ultimate thing. The ultimate thing is to carry yourself with respect and pride and play in the spirit of this event.”
Wednesday is the final round of the Folds of Honor Collegiate. The leaders will tee off at 8 a.m. ET.
Alex Gelman is the current Ron Balicki Scholarship Award winner.
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.
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
“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.
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
“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.”
