Iowa golf confident going into NCAA regionals

IOWA CITY - The Iowa men's golf team is feeling good as it heads back to the NCAA regional tournament for the sixth straight year.

'Something we work toward every year is making it to regionals and nationals and it's pretty awesome to accomplish that for the past three years that I've been here and even make it to nationals my sophomore year,” senior Steven Ihm said.

The regional meet begins today at The Club Hawthorne in Columbia, Mo.

Ihm has had a successful senior year, earning Big Ten Golfer of the Week honors two consecutive weeks after his individual victories at the Hawkeye-GRE and Boilermaker invitationals.

He also received all-Big Ten honors along with juniors Ian Vandersee and Brian Bullington.

'It's pretty cool,” Bullington said. 'I think Illinois and us were the only people who had three (players receive those honors). That just kind of reflects how deep our team is, how strong we are and how good of a chance we have going into regionals.”

The top five teams from the regional will advance on to the NCAA finals in Hutchinson, Kan., on May 23-28. Iowa is the No. 6 seed this weekend.

'They actually have us seeded outside of qualifying,” Coach Mark Hankins said. 'So were going to have to play well.

'You know it's three rounds, and were going to have to play well each round and hopefully it will be enough to get us to finals.”

The Hawkeye have proved they can move up rankings - and do it quickly. Two weeks ago, at the Big Ten Tournament, Iowa carded a final round score of 284 (4-under), the lowest 18-hole score of the tournament, to move from sixth to third on the final day.

'It's not think we have to go do anything outrageous or play amazing, we just have to continue to do what we do,” Hankins said.

And what they have been doing has been working.

'I feel like we have eight guys that can all compete so this season we just kept rotating the lineup, except for these past three tournaments we kept the same lineup,” Hankins said.