Hawkeyes’ drive is to ‘make noise’ at NCAA Regionals

IOWA CITY - The Iowa men's golf team isn't exactly in a 'been there, done that” mode. The Hawkeyes will make their seventh consecutive appearance in an NCAA Regional when they tee off Thursday at The Course at Yale in New Haven, Conn.

Seven regional appearances means something. Clearly, the bar has been raised for the program, which had a solid foundation installed by former coach and now UI administrator Mark Hankins and is now run by first-year coach Tyler Stith.

There's no question the bar has been raised for Iowa golf. What else is out there? The national championship, of course.

'It's probably time to start saying our goal is the national championship,” senior Ian Vandersee said. 'We expect to qualify to NCAA regional play. Now, let's expect to make nationals. Our goal isn't to have a chance to make nationals, let's expect to make nationals and make some noise.”

This weekend, the Hawkeyes are the No. 7 seed in a 14-team field (fifth-ranked Vanderbilt is the top seed). The top five advance to the NCAA Finals (held May 29-June 3 at The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla.).

Iowa, ranked 41st in the latest Golfstat.com rankings, will compete for its fourth NCAA Finals berth. The goal is the NCAA Finals and 'making noise,” which can only be defined by a further pushing of the bar for success.

'We have goals to win the national championship,” sophomore Carson Schaake said. 'I feel like we're getting closer to that with each and every tournament we play, in each and every day that we practice. We want to be a top-level team, we want to compete with the best. If we can stick to our guns, we can get there.”

Schaake is the embodiment of the rise in expectations. At the Big Ten Championships on April 26 (at Victoria National Golf Club in Newburgh, Ind.), he shared medalist honors with Illinois' Nick Hardy, becoming Iowa's third Big Ten champion.

Schaake shot a 7-under 65 on that Friday, the best 18-hole score of his career and the lowest round of the three-day event. He overcame a three-stroke deficit on Sunday to claim a share of the Big Ten title, joining Cedar Rapids native John Jacobs (1946) and Brad Klapprott (1992) as Iowa's only conference medalist.

Schaake, who has been Iowa's top performer in six of nine events and has finished in the top five four different times, also earned first-team all-conference honors, averaging 71.37 strokes per round.

'He's been on the cusp pretty much the entire year,” said Stith, a former Iowa player and assistant coach who was hired to replace Hankins last August. 'I told him he was going to win this year. I didn't know it was going to be the Big Ten championship, but I knew he would win a college golf championship this year. I told him that repeatedly. He just had to continue to put himself in contention. The more he was in contention, the more comfortable he was in those situations and the more likely it was for him to finally break through.”

The Iowa golf program is very much a product of the region. Schaake is from Omaha, Neb., not Florida or Europe. Seven of the eight players on Iowa's roster are from the midwest. Joining Schaake and Vandersee this weekend are Raymond Knoll (a sophomore from Naperville, Ill., and a second-team all-Big Ten pick), senior Brian Bullington (Frankfort, Ill.) and freshman Sam Meuret (from Brunswick, Neb.).

A northern school in a sport dominated by southern schools that can putt, chip and play year-round comes with inherent motivations.

'When I was younger and learning more about college golf and going through recruiting, I didn't realize northern schools, and especially Iowa, were going to be this good at golf,” Vandersee said. 'How do you expect to be good? You have winter five months out of the year? It's been kind of fun. We go down to Arizona State and compete as a team. We finished third and didn't play all that great. ‘Hey, you guys live down here all year-round, you have the opportunity to play all year and, for the most part, we can hang with you.'”

A key component for the growth of the program has been the Hoak Facility, a $2 million do-it-all for men's and women's golf overlooking the sixth hole at Finkbine Golf Course. It opened in 2013 after five years grinding by Hankins and Iowa athletics. It includes two heated indoor-to-outdoor hitting bays, a complete indoor putting and chipping green and a video analysis booth to review golfers' swings.

It's not a Florida course in February, but the Hoak Facility is as good as it gets in an Iowa February. Before it was built, Iowa players commuted 15 or 20 minutes to Riverside Golf for indoor-outdoor bays and practiced putting in a room set up in the Field House.

'It's made a huge difference. These guys are out there all the time. They take full advantage of it,” Stith said. 'We can get thousands more repetitions than we ever could. And it's right on campus. They can come over and practice for an hour or two and not give up their entire afternoon, still get back and get to study table and go to school.”

As far as direct measure for where Iowa sits nationally, look at the Big Ten tournament. Iowa finished second to Illinois, Golfstat.com's No. 4, and it was a decisive 32-stroke advantage (1,138-1,170). If you look a little more closely - and the Hawkeyes certainly did - Iowa had a dip at the end of the third round and the gap opened. Other than that, the Hawkeyes went stroke-for-stroke with the No. 4 team in the country for 67 of 72 holes.

So, the national title talk isn't just crazy talk.

'You can say we lost by 30 or you can say for 67 of 72 holes we were just as good as the best team in the country,” Vandersee said. 'That's been an attitude that the team has taken over.”

NCAA REGIONALS

l What

: NCAA Yale Regional men's golf tournament

l Where

: The Course at Yale, New Haven, Conn.

l When

: Today through Saturday

l Notes: Iowa is seeded seventh in the 14-team field ... the top five teams advance to the NCAA Finals, May 29-June 3 in Bradenton, Fla. ... Iowa senior Ian Vandersee is in his fourth regional, senior Brian Bullington

his third.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com