2025 IlliniBoard Golf Preview

OK, yes, that's not the 2025 golf team. That's three guys from the 2025 golf team + Tommy Kuhl + Piercen Hunt atop Engine 77 back in November. But when you have a photo of the Big Three from this year's team on top of the fire truck, you lead with the photo of the Big Three from this year's team.

(I guess it's not much of a fire truck photo because the TV is blocking the truck. But the Big Three is the point here. Focus on the Big Three and don't get distracted by Piercen's magnificent 'stache.)

We'll get to why I'm calling them the Big Three in a bit. But to properly start a season preview I first need you to...

Meet The Team

Let's just do some bios. And I'll include each player's ranking in the World Amateur Golf Rankings (WAGR), Data Golf, and Clippd.

Jackson Buchanan
Year: Senior
Nickname: The President
Rankings: WAGR #12, Data Golf #14, Clippd #15

His nickname is not something I came up with. Credit goes to Tron Carter from No Laying Up who was watching Jackson in the US Amateur and tweeted the following:

Someone then quickly pointed out that JB's middle name is "Tyler" and a nickname was born.

Jackson.
Tyler.
Buchanan.

The President.

The US Amateur is probably the best place to start when discussing Jackson. Back in August, he made it all the way to the semifinals of the US Amateur (the biggest amateur golf tournament in the world). When the bracket came out for match play (there's two days of stroke play and then the top 64 players advance to match play), his odds of getting to the Sweet 16 were about one-in-{my-typical-score-on-18-holes}.

In the first round he drew WAGR #7 Preston Summerhays. And if he beat Summerhays, he'd get WAGR #1 Luke Clanton. Think Illini basketball getting Tennessee in the first round and then Auburn in the second round. And beating them both.

He advanced all the way to the semifinals where he lost to Iowa's Noah Kent. Which is a shame because the two finalists both get an invite to The Masters. Kent has since come back to earth since his one lucky week in August (he's a Hawkeye golfer let me cook) so I look forward to his 84-89 at The Masters when it should totally be Jackson staying in the crow's nest.

I think you probably know most of what you need to know about Jackson. And if you don't, here's all you need to know.

His success is centered around whether he snubs me when going in for a handshake:

Why did he play so well at the US Amateur? Because he snubbed Max after this Golf Channel interview:

And the snubs continued this past fall:

So that's really all you need to know about Jackson's senior season. As long as people continue to snub him, he'll win the individual NCAA title.

Ryan Voois
Year: Junior
Nickname: Harvey Buckets
Rankings: WAGR #82, Data Golf #47, Clippd #156

This nickname is not a Robert nickname either. I've told this story before but let's go through it again:

I was walking past the putting green at Grayhawk (2023 NCAA Championships) and Voois, 6th-man on that team, was practicing some long putts. Mike Small was gathering the team together for something so he said "RV - let's go" and Voois joined the rest of the team. Except to me it sounded like Small had said "Harvey."

I asked Voois about it the next day as we were walking around the course. He said that the story goes like this: Everyone referred to him by his initials that year (R.V.), and "RV" sounds like Harvey so some people started calling him Harvey. And since he's such a great putter, they started calling him Harvey Buckets.

And he is a great putter. I've walked enough rounds watching Voois to have seen him drop some absolute bombs. Since the fall season ended, he's been playing really, really well (he just finished ninth at the Jones Cup Invitational which is easily the best field he'll play in until the NCAA Championships in May).

His WAGR (World Amateur Golf Ranking) is all the way up to 82 now, a crazy climb. And on Data Golf, when you sort by NCAA golfers, he's 47th, giving us three players in the top 50. So why is his Clippd ranking (the official ranking) #156? We'll get to that in a bit. We're now 18 months into "we know these rankings suck - we're working on it" but... more on that in a bit.

Max Herendeen
Year: Sophomore
Nickname: Max Power
Rankings: WAGR #26, Data Golf #31, Clippd #44

I called him Max Power after he hit what I believe to be the single best golf shot I've ever seen in person in my life. Let's revisit that, shall we?

His drive is in the deep rough on #2 (a long par 5 at La Costa). All he can do is chop it out and advance it 15 yards. So he has this third shot from 280 yards with water right. If this was where his drive ended up, maybe he takes a 6 iron here and puts himself in a good spot with a good wedge number. But this is his third on a par five so he's going for the green.

If you're wondering where that ended up, it ended up here:

280 yards with a THREE IRON to 18 inches for a tap-in birdie. Max Power.

Herendeen climbing all the way to #26 in the WAGR as a sophomore is a massive accomplishment. It indicates that he should be top-5 in the WAGR as a senior before moving on to professional golf. I don't think other Illini golfers like Nick Hardy or Thomas Pieters had climbed to top-25 in the WAGR halfway though their sophomore years. So the sky is the limit for Max.

More on that sky later. This is just the "get to know you" section.

Trey Marrion
Year: Freshman
Nickname: The Librarian
Rankings: WAGR #528, Data Golf #266, Clippd #165

I just came up with that nickname nine seconds ago. But I'm totally calling him Marrion The Librarian this season.

Marrion is the top recruit in the 2024 class. And that was right on the heels of landing Max in 2023. Think of it as... Max was Ayo, Marrion is Kofi. Both were top-15 recruits in the various rankings (Max was #14 on the AJGA rankings, Marrion was #13 on the GolfWeek rankings), so consider them 5-star recruits.

And both immediately went into the fall lineup as freshmen. Herendeen turned that "immediately into the lineup in the fall" into a T2 finish at the NCAA Championships in May. Marrion will now so very obviously turn "immediately into the lineup in the fall" as a true freshman into a T2 finish at the NCAA Championships in May.

Which reminds me. I don't think people realize that in 2023, Jackson Buchanan finished T2 at NCAA's (one stroke back) and in 2024 both Tyler Goecke and Max Herendeen finished T2 (also one stroke back). We are a couple lipped out putts each year from "Illini golf looking for third straight individual title in 2025."

Anyway, I'm rambling again. This is "Meet The Team" and I'm all over the place.

Ethan Wilson
Year: Sophomore
Nickname: Alpine
Rankings: WAGR #592, Data Golf #276, Clippd #503

I'm going with Alpine here because both of his parents competed for Canada in the Olympics in Alpine skiing. When I tell you that Mike Small likes to recruit golfers from athletic families, this is more proof that Mike Small likes to recruit golfers from athletic families. But don't spread that around because it's Small's recruiting secret. "Oh, your parents were in the Olympics? I can teach you the finer things of golf."

I should also note here that when looking at the rankings for Wilson and Marrion and comparing them to The Big Three, you can see why I call them The Big Three. This is not some kind of insult towards Wilson and Marrion. Golf rankings require you to play a lot of tournaments. On February 4th last year, Max Herendeen was #322 in the WAGR. He's climbed from #322 to #26 in one year based on a lot of great Tournaments. Both Wilson and Marrion will have the same opportunity. But those three are all top-50 on Data Golf and well ahead of the rest of the team.

I'll discuss these last two together.

Jake Birdwell
Year: Freshman
Nickname: Give me some time to work on it but he's a golfer with "bird" in his name.
Rankings: WAGR #1237, Data Golf NR, Clippd #442

Joseph Buttress
Year: Freshman
Nickname: Need to give it time but I'm leaning towards something reinforcement-based.
Rankings: WAGR #2497, Data Golf NR , Clippd #1933

Birdwell is a freshman from Minnesota. Buttress is a freshman from Australia. Both were mostly on the sidelines (or playing as individuals) this past fall while the lineup was Buchanan - Herendeen - Voois - Marrion - Wilson.

But, like Ryan Voois in 2023 and Ethan Wilson last year, they'll have an opportunity in the spring season to push for a spot in the rotation. One of them will be the 6th man for regionals and nationals in May (just like Voois was in 2023 and Wilson last year), so that's probably their main goal. Battle it out for a spot on the jet when it flies to Carlsbad in May.

And I can already tell that my brain has moved on from "Meet The Team" to "What Kind Of Team Will This Be?" so let's just get to the next section.

What Kind Of Team Will This Be?

I've been writing these previews for several years. And I can't remember any of those previews including three golfers in the top-100 of the WAGR at the time of writing. As mentioned above, Herendeen was in the 300's at this time last year. So to have The President at #12, Max Power at #26, and Harvey Buckets at #82, that's significant. Data Golf's NCAA rankings have these three #14, #31, and #47 (WAGR includes non-NCAA amateurs from all over the world; Data Golf restricts to NCAA golfers). That's significant.

So the first answer to "what kind of team will this be?" is "a team with a Big Three." That doesn't guarantee that Buchanan, Herendeen, and Voois will be the top three Illini performers at every tournament this spring (this is golf, not tennis), but it does suggest that this team is up there with other strong Illini teams of the past 15 years.

And it also puts a massive focus on those other four guys. I don't want to put all kinds of pressure on one sophomore and three freshmen, but "what kind of team will this be?" will essentially come down to two of them taking a big step forward.

If you're just a casual Illini golf observer and don't know how it all works, college golf tournaments are five golfers with four scores counting each day (worst score is dropped). That means two things:

1. Depth can't stop at three. A fourth score will count every single day of every tournament and 69, 70, 70 & 79 is no way to win a golf tournament. Either the #4 guy or the #5 guy has to put up a solid score.
2. Five solid golfers, not four, is the way that teams rise to the top. You'll be watching scores and the wind has picked up on the final nine and you'll see that your #4 guy suddenly has a string of bogies. Then you look at the team in second place and their 5th guy put up a 73 while your fifth guy put up an 81. Which means that every bogey your guy is making is counting towards the score. Many, many tournaments are won because "it doesn't matter if our #4 triple-bogeys here - our fifth guy already put up a 73."

So what's the outlook for our #4 and our #5? Let's just start with the scoring averages from the fall. One thing to keep in mind: some of these scores are "playing as an individual." Meaning, one of the freshmen is playing the same course but he's not going to be part of the team score. And golf is a lot easier when there's no pressure. As we saw a lot last season, a guy will fire 5-under playing as an individual, get put into the lineup the next tournament, and then finish +21 after the three rounds.

With that clarified, here are the scoring averages from the fall:

Jackson Buchanan (15 rounds): 70.00
Max Herendeen (15 rounds): 70.53
Trey Marrion (15 rounds): 71.87
Ryan Voois (15 rounds): 72.13
Jake Birdwell (12 rounds): 73.25
Ethan Wilson (15 rounds): 73.47
Joseph Buttress (6 rounds): 79.33

Keep in mind what we're talking about here. You might see Birdwell ahead of Wilson and say "well then Birdwell is our #5, right?" But Birdwell didn't play the Folds Of Honor (the tournament I covered in Michigan in September). That was a difficult course with the average score for all golfers up at 74.46. Had Birdwell played in that tournament and shot, say +15, his average would push past Wilson above.

But this does frame a few things well:

• Just like last year, Buchanan and Herendeen were the top two guys in the fall. I'm hoping Voois can push them, but the two guys in the top-25 of the WAGR (well, Herendeen dropped to #26 now) are playing like it.
• Marrion finishing a few strokes ahead of Voois across the entire fall was a really big development. Voois has been playing lights out since the fall season ended in October, so he's still ahead of Marrion, but it's very encouraging that Marrion was so steady in the fall. The #1 thing that would help this team be great is for Marrion to say "Big Three? Try Big Four."
• Birdwell clearly had a better fall than Buttress. That can be seen from the scores as well as the fact that Mike Small chose him as the single "Individual" at a few of the tournaments where teams were allowed to bring one extra golfer.

This is the next place where I will counter with "but this is golf." In the winter, college golfers play in individual (non-team-affiliated) tournaments. And Voois had the best winter by far (plus Birdwell wasn't too shabby). You're looking at 15 rounds there. Well, what would happen if I then added these scores:

Patriot All America Invitational
T2 - Ryan Voois (-7)
T17 - Jackson Buchanan (-3)
T22 - Jake Birdwell (-2)
T52 - Max Herendeen (+3)
T71 - Ethan Wilson (+8)

Jones Cup Invitational
9 - Ryan Voois (+1)
T58 - Max Herendeen (+12)
T60 - Jackson Buchanan (+13)

(I really needed to get to Sea Island after the bowl game so I could snub Jackson.)

So if I add those scoring averages to the numbers from above...

Jackson Buchanan: 70.76
Max Herendeen: 71.38
Ryan Voois: 71.52
Trey Marrion: 72.05
Jake Birdwell: 72.46
Ethan Wilson: 73.33
Joseph Buttress: 79.33

Voois jumps to third (and nearly passes Herendeen for 2nd). And Birdwell... you know, I think I need to adjust my view of "Birdwell and Buttress are battling for the 6th man spot." Birdwell is probably pushing Wilson for fifth at this moment. Again, Wilson was playing in pressure-packed tournaments while Birdwell was playing as an individual last fall. We've yet to see what Jake Birdwell does with the pressure of being in the lineup. But these scores here do open my eyes a little bit.

Wait, didn't Birdwell also win his match in the exhibition match with Florida State last week? I need to go look up those scores. Hold on.

Marrion didn't play (a little birdie told me he was sick) and Birdwell did indeed win his match 1-up over Florida State senior Patrick McCann. So this is one of those instances where I'm writing the preview and learning as I type that we all need to keep our eyes on a Jake Birdwell/Ethan Wilson battle this spring for the #5 spot. If Birdwell is playing this well, might he be in the lineup next week for the spring season opener in Hawaii?

(Yes, that's right - play college golf, fly to Hawaii to play golf in February. We've all made so many bad choices with our lives.)

OK, I think I'm now ready to tell you What Kind Of Team This Might Be.

The President, Max Power, and Harvey Buckets should be the consistent stalwarts in the lineup. The Librarian was steady last fall and should hold down the #4 spot as a freshman. And I've learned this evening while writing this on the train to Minnesota that there could very well be a battle for that #5 spot if freshman Jake Birdwell continues playing (no, BIRDie-ing) WELL.

I'll keep working on it.

A Word On The Clippd Rankings

I don't want to spend an hour on this. Last year's golf preview was 4,887 words and I spent the first 2,400 words ranting about the Clippd rankings. It deserved that scorn (it was an epic disaster last year), but I'm not going to rant for 2,400 words again. After all of the complaints, they overhauled the system in the offseason and I'm willing to give it some time to see if it makes more sense this year.

If you want to read about the epic disaster of the team rankings last year and you don't mind the feeling of "I've read this far and I'm only halfway through?", you can check out my 2024 IlliniBoard Golf Preview from last February or you could read the Golf Rankings Rant I wrote last May. Instead, for this year's mini-rant, I want to talk about the player rankings.

The player rankings don't matter in the same way the team rankings do. The team rankings set the seeding for the NCAA regionals (just picture if the NET rankings were used for seeding and being #14 in the NET meant you were locked into a 4-seed); the player rankings just give us a view into how the new Strokes Gained system grades the individual players (and, essentially, how the new system approaches "rankings").

The major issue with the team rankings has been (hopefully) fixed. There was heavy weighting for a team winning a tournament last year. And the tournaments were supposedly adjusted based on the strength of field. But it didn't work (like, at ALL). Washington won one tournament on their home course and that single win carried them all year. Last spring they were finishing 9th in this tournament and 16th out of 18 in that tournament yet because they won big on their home course early in the season, they stayed in the top-10. Just picture something like Washington basketball being 10th in the NET this year while everyone in the sport is saying "what? how??" And then Washington Basketball getting a 3-seed because there's no NCAA Committee to say "wait, a team with this many losses being a 3-seed isn't right."

(I should mention that Washington got a 2-seed last year and then didn't even come close to being one of the five qualifying teams out of their regional. Because they were maybe the 50th-best team, not the 10th best team. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the postseason meetings this past summer where they tweaked the system.)

This is all the next generation of the analytics debate (at least in my mind).

Phase I: The old scouts in the room with Billy Beane just didn't understand what he was talking about.
Phase II: Everyone slowly comes around to an appreciation of a new way to rank things (WAR for baseball, Strokes Gained for golf, etc).
Phase III: Bad analytical approaches to ranking stuff emerges and the people assembling said rankings won't listen to objections because they think they're talking to the old scouts in the room with Billy Beane.

So the crisis for college golf has been the data people saying "you might not like it but Washington really is the 10th best team" and everyone else saying "if you think Washington is the 10th best team then you have built a terrible model." The data people will react to every "this model is bad" with "you just don't like the outputs" and refuse to listen to "no, this is obviously terrible."

Hopefully that has been fixed. On the Clippd website, in the first bullet point of how the rankings were adjusted by the college golf coaches association over the summer, it says this:

Compression of the points scale to ensure a more gradual and consistent distribution of points awarded during events throughout the season. The premium for better finishes is still present but has been reduced.

"The premium for better finishes... has been reduced" = "Washington won't get a massive boost from one single home-course win this year."

We'll see how it all shakes out. I might be back mid-May with another Rankings Rant. But I mostly want to discuss the player rankings here.

Here's the section from last year's preview that talks about the player rankings. From February 12th last year:

Here are the current Illinois player rankings on Clippd:

#18 - Max Herendeen (FR)
#49 - Timmy Crawford (SR)
#50 - Jackson Buchanan (JR)
#174 - Ryan Voois (SO)

I get that Herendeen burst onto the scene last fall as a true freshman. But the system already has him 18th while JB is 50th? Because I'm a freak, I remember that all four of those guys were within only a few shots of each other last fall. Let me go pull the actual numbers. 

All four played 11 rounds last fall. Scoring totals:

Herendeen - 773 (avg 70.27)
Buchanan - 775 (avg 70.45)
Voois - 785 (avg 71.36)
Crawford - 787 (avg 71.55)

So if Voois averaged 71.36 and was ranked 174th while Crawford averaged 71.55 and was ranked 49th, this has to take into account scores from previous seasons. But if it does, how do Herendeen's first 11 rounds of college golf put him that far in front of JB who is a top-50 amateur worldwide and a 2nd place finisher at the NCAA Championships in May?

I understand, a year later, that's it's a Strokes Gained approach and that's why Voois and Crawford could have identical scoring averages and be ranked so far apart. Crawford's SG numbers were through the roof in that one tournament (where he was playing as an individual and under no pressure, I might add) and that kept his rating high throughout the year. SG works for individual golf on the various tours. I remain skeptical that this specific system is the best method to rank team golf with dropped scores.

The team rankings are the ones that matter. Those are used to seed the NCAA Tournament. The individual rankings just give us a window into how this new system rates things. And I still don't think I like it?

Current Illinois player rankings per Clippd:

#15 Jackson Buchanan
#44 Max Herendeen
#156 Ryan Voois
#165 Trey Marrion
#442 Jake Birdwell
#503 Ethan Wilson

Now let's look at Data Golf. They are also a Strokes Gained system. Their published approach:

The DG Index is our estimate of the quality of each golfer's recent performances relative to the average player in the NCAA DI Stroke Play Championship. It is in units of strokes-gained per round.

Here are their outputs:

#14 Jackson Buchanan
#31 Max Herendeen
#47 Ryan Voois
#266 Trey Marrion
#276 Ethan Wilson

Those rankings make so much more sense. Like, a billion times more sense. It's still strokes gained, it just A) approaches SG from a different direction and B) adds in more data than just the current golf season. I can understand why Clippd (and perhaps college golf coaches) are restricting things to mostly the current season (and, I'm guessing, excluding individual tournaments like the Jones Cup Invitational a few weeks ago). But if we have the data, and the data has guardrails like "sanctioned tournaments only", why are we excluding it and coming up with incomplete player rankings?

I mean, I did the three rankings for all of the players in the section above. What if we do that for Florida State's Luke Clanton?

WAGR: #1
Data Golf: #1
Clippd: #45

What are we doing? WHAT ARE WE DOING?

I get it. Clanton is trying to earn his PGA Tour card through PGA Tour University's "Accelerated Program". He's been playing a lot of professional tournaments and not as many college tournaments. That restricts his data inputs since the professional results are not factored in.

But then there's no point to having a system if it says that Luke Clanton is the 45th-best college golfer. Don't even rank the players if those are your outputs. You said you were going to abandon the old head-to-head rankings and move to a Strokes Gained system. Fine. But this right here proves there's not enough data for a single-season Strokes Gained system to spit out accurate data. It MUST be expanded like Data Golf's (fantastic) Strokes Gained system for ranking NCAA golfers.

And I swear to God if those individual player rankings are used to build the "strength of field" multipliers in the team rankings and someone beating Luke Clanton in a tournament only gets credit for beating the 45th-best golfer......

I need to talk about something else. Let's just get to the season outlook.

Where We Stand

The Illini are 10th in the preseason Clippd team rankings. This is all I'm going to say about the (official NCAA) Clippd team rankings. I promise to wait until May to see if they fixed it.

The first tournament of the spring starts Thursday in Hawaii. And the big question (especially after everything I went through above) - does Mike Small stick with the same 5-man lineup he used all fall? Or does Jake Birdwell maybe challenge Ethan Wilson for the #5 spot? If we take another look at those results from the Patriot All America Invitational in January...

T2 - Ryan Voois (-7)
T17 - Jackson Buchanan (-3)
T22 - Jake Birdwell (-2)
T52 - Max Herendeen (+3)
T71 - Ethan Wilson (+8)

Birdwell beating Max by five shots and Wilson by 10 might mean he's ready for the lineup, right? I don't know what he's been doing in their internal team competitions throughout the winter, but those very real results from a tournament with a very strong field suggest that Mike Small might be considering it.

And, let's be honest, it might not even be Wilson he'd be replacing. What if Trey Marrion is still under the weather. What if someone else is dealing with wrist tightness? This is why you have a bench. And the bench guys need to be ready.

Overall, though, when I look at the 2025 Illini golf team, I think one thing:

Senior - Junior - Sophomore - Freshman

The core of the 2025 Illini golf team is Small's best recruit in the 2021 class and his best recruit in the 2022 class and his best recruit in the 2023 class and his best recruit in the 2024 class. All four were top-50 in the AJGA rankings. All four were put into The Mike Small System™️ – Trey Marrion only recently – and are now set to begin their quest for another trip to match play in May.

The obstacles in the way:

• The first test is this Hawaii tournament next week. The Illini are currently ranked 10th and the field includes #16 Utah, #21 BYU, #23 San Diego State, and #28 Texas A&M. Want to prove that this is a legitimate top-10 team right from the get-go? Go win this first tournament.
• The other big tests of the spring schedule will be the Southern Highlands Invitational in Las Vegas (always one of the top fields in college golf) and the Haskins Award Invitational in Augusta the weekend before The Masters (no, they don't get to play Augusta National for that one). The Haskins field this year includes other top-10 teams like Texas, North Carolina, and Oklahoma State so that will be a big one.
• Big Tens will be different this year because the Big Ten has 18 teams now. And UCLA is pretty good. As of right now, Illinois is 10th and UCLA 13th in the Clippd team rankings. Depending on how the season goes, it's possible Illinois isn't the favorite in the Big Ten Tournament for the first time in 15 years. Yes, Illini golf "only" has 13 titles in those 15 years, but the two times we finished second, we were the favorite. Adding the west coast teams makes that tougher to do.
• On the "not really an obstacle" side, Illinois is hosting an NCAA Regional this year at Atkins Golf Club in Urbana. This is, every year, the biggest advantage in college golf. Six schools get to host and those six schools will be placed at their own regional on their home course. So even if this is a rough spring (I don't think it will be, but if it is), we'll still get the advantage of playing the regional on a course we know and practice. Purdue qualified for the NCAA Championships last year because they got to host a regional. And then they finished dead last (30th out of 30 teams) at NCAAs.
• And then, of course, if qualified, another trip to La Costa. The three-year NCAA contract with La Costa was extended for an additional two years after last year's successful NCAA Championship so that means it will be held at La Costa for at least four more years (if not for 20+ years?). The whole idea behind the La Costa renovations was to make it the "Omaha" for NCAA golf. College baseball fans flock to Omaha every year; college golf fans can flock to Carlsbad. Max finished T2 at La Costa last year and he should get three more cracks at it on the same course.

To get there, and to climb into the final-eight match play again, Mike Small will need everyone to climb up a rung on the ladder:

-> The President must play like he's trying to win an election. Like, seriously - he's 6th in the PGA Tour University standings and top-5 gets him solid status on the Korn Ferry Tour immediately after graduation. The Secret Service needs to keep him away from handshake lines, though.
-> Harvey Buckets needs to take one step forward from last year (his first in the lineup). First year he was the sixth man. Second year he was a solid piece in a lineup that won the stroke play portion of the NCAA Championships by 16 shots. Now it's time to show off that putter and get. buckets.
-> Max Power is already on the path to a PGA Tour future. I believe he proved last year that he was a top-3 player in the 2023 class with Jackson Koivun of Auburn and Wenyi Ding of Arizona State. Ding turned pro after one year, and Koivun won all three National Player of the Year awards as a true freshman, but I believe Max proved with his T2 finish at La Costa that he was clearly the #3 guy in that class. Sophomore year should = more consistency.
-> The Librarian is only a freshman. But after a solid fall debut where he didn't have many blowup rounds at all, the goal for him this spring = quiet scores. (Get it? Quiet like a library.) Freshmen aren't expected to go out and win two tournaments. That's for The President. Just put up a quiet 72 or 73 every round with the occasional 68.

Beyond that, hopefully, Alpine is ready to solidify the fifth spot. If he's not, {nickname pending but it will have something to do with birdies since his name is Birdwell} can push for a spot in the lineup. Wait, Birdland? Maybe I'll workshop Birdland.

Bird named it.
Bird made it.
Bird heard it.
Then played it.
Well stated.
BIRDLAND.
It happened down in BIRDLAND.

I am 5,484 words into this preview and I'm making obscure Manhattan Transfer references that no one will understand so I know that it's time to end this. I'll just end it like this.

I am very grateful for how these guys have accepted this weird dude who shows up in Carlsbad or Grand Haven to watch them play golf and then write about it. They always thank me for coming out and covering them. They always shake my hand (well, except for Jackson).

Like, this photo below is dumb, right? I'm taking a selfie with the golf team while standing in line for a football game:

It's objectively weird for some 52 year-old blogger to get so excited to get to know (and cover) a college golf team. Why did I get so angry and block a bunch of people on Twitter after the quarterfinals loss last year when the Angry Bears Fan in several of you lashed out at them in the worst way at the worst time? Because these are my dudes, and covering them is one of my favorite things.

I knew I loved Illini football when I started the blog. I knew that everyone would fail to understand how much I love Illini basketball (mostly because of my football-centric approach). But I had no idea how much I'd love covering Illini golf when I started down this road.

The reason? I said it after La Costa last year: the types of kids (I'm 52 - yes they're kids to me) that Mike Small recruits. Every single business on earth is about relationships, and in this second-career business of mine, these Illini golf relationships are some of my favorite.

So... go team. Win in Hawaii. I tried to get the IlliniBoard Of Directors to approve my travel to Kauai'i but they said no (there is no board of directors - just a guy basing travel decision on subscription numbers). Let's win the Big Ten again and then I can't wait for the NCAA Regional to be in my city.

Think they'll let me park the fire truck by the putting green?