Badgers open season at Gopher Invitational Sept 11-12
September 06, 2011 | Men's Golf
Sept. 6, 2011
WAYZATA, Minn. - The Badger men's golf team will open its fall season this weekend at the Gopher Invitational at the Spring Hill Golf Club in Wayzata, Minnesota. The first and second rounds will be played on Sunday, September 11th, beginning with a shotgun start at 8:00 a.m. The final round of the Gopher Invitational will be held on Monday.
Wisconsin is one of the four Big Ten teams at the invitational, which includes: Minnesota, Iowa, and Penn State. The field, the largest in the tournament's seven years, features 14 teams from 10 collegiate conferences. This is the Badgers' fifth consecutive appearance at the Gopher Invitational and will be the first invitational for the new head coach, Michael Burcin.
"This is a great field that we will face at Minnesota this week on a wonderful golf course," Burcin said. "We are anxious to see how we stack up and give us a measuring stick for where we need to get better moving forward. Coach Bryant Odom and I could not be more excited to begin our first event together with such a great group of guys."
Wisconsin's top returning player is sophomore Stephane Dubois. Dubois posted a 74.07 stroke average in 2010-11 to lead the team, as well as having the third-best freshman stroke average in Badger history. Returning on the course for the Badgers at the Gopher Invite are sophomore Rob Jacobsen, junior Anthony Aicher, and junior Chris Meyer. Freshman Thomas O'Bryan will be making his collegiate debut for Wisconsin.
"After three rounds of qualifying we are very happy with the work that the entire team put in last week. With some bad weather and just having a week to qualify, the guys were very anxious to get going and their intensity was high," Burcin said of the start of the fall season.
Burcin continued, "We are excited about this lineup and the entire team in general. We have some younger guys that have really come in ready to compete in Thomas O'Bryan and Brian Starker, along with being impressed with the leadership of Chris Meyer, Thomas Welk, and Anthony Aicher."
Live scoring is available on golfstat.com.
