The Hawkeyes will face a challenge playing on Bermuda grass.

By Rod Engblom
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The Iowa men’s golf team will head outside the Midwest for the first time this season.

The Hawkeyes, coming off a first-place finish in the GolfWeek Conference Challenge, will play in the David Toms Intercollegiate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Saturday (36 holes) and Oct. 11 (18 holes).

“I’m really excited about this week, because I heard that the scores are pretty high at this golf course,” junior Carson Schaake said. “Plus-31 won as a team last year, which means that the golf course is really hard.”

To put it into perspective, the Hawkeyes won the GolfWeek event shooting minus-22 after 54 holes of play. That means there is a difference of 53 strokes between first-place finishers at the GolfWeek and the David Toms.

The University Club course will also give the Hawkeyes the new challenge of playing on Bermuda grass for the first time this season.

“I feel like it’s a great opportunity for us to travel outside of the Midwest and to get used to playing on Bermuda,” Hawkeye coach Tyler Stith said. “Our next three events are on Bermuda grass, so at some point you have to get down there and play on it. So this is going to be a good introduction to playing in the South and playing on Bermuda for us.”

Bermuda grass is a warm-climate grass that is used on golf courses throughout the southern United States. In the North, golf courses use bentgrass, which the team is accustomed to playing on.

While bentgrass provides a more consistent surface for the ball to lie on the fairways, rough, and greens, Bermuda proves to be a little different in how the ball sits.

“You don’t get as clean of lies as you do off bentgrass,” Stith said. “Bermuda sometimes, especially in the rough, the ball kind of nests and sits down a little more. Also it’s more of a sandier base instead of a soil base, so just chipping and pitching is probably the most difficult thing.”

The greens are also much different with Bermuda grass.

“The other thing is the Bermuda grain can have an influence on the greens, so later in the day, Bermuda grass will lie down more,” Stith said. “But it can have an influence definitely on the speed of the putts if you’re putting down grain or into the grain. It’s just another element that we don’t have to think about up here.”

Even though the course will present different playing conditions for the Hawks, everyone who is traveling to Louisiana has played on Bermuda in the past.

Coming off of the individual first-place finish at GolfWeek , junior Raymond Knoll will try to continue the momentum he gained, but this time on a very difficult course.

“I’ve never played there before, but everyone I’ve talked to about it says it’s a really good test,” he said. “It’s really hard; there’s a lot of water, and there’s a lot of trouble out there.”

Although the team will play at a new course with different conditions, Stith is confident that the Hawkeyes will still put themselves in a position to win.

“There’s a really good field down there, but again, we’re a really good team,” he said. “I fully expect us to be prepared when we arrive, and have a good couple days of practice, and put ourselves in a position to compete right from the beginning.”

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