Iowa golf set for weekend in Ohio
Both Iowa men’s and women’s golf with travel to Ohio to compete this weekend.
Iowa’s Manuela Lizarazu follows her putt during the Diane Thomason Invitational at Finkbine Golf Course on September 30th, 2018.The Hawkeyes placed 1st overall.
April 22, 2021
At the Indiana Spring Invitational in Bloomington last weekend, Iowa women’s golf wasn’t at full strength, as freshman Klara Wildhaber missed the event with a wrist injury.
Without Wildhaber, Iowa finished the 16-team tournament in 14th place.
Wildhaber will, however, be back this weekend as Iowa begins its pursuit of a Big Ten Championship Friday at TPC River’s Bend in Maineville, Ohio.
Before she injured her wrist, Wildhaber had recorded three-straight top ten finishes as an individual.
On Thursday, Hawkeye head coach Megan Menzel told The Daily Iowan that Wildhaber has not practiced much and that Wildhaber’s injury status is still day-to-day.
Competing alongside Wildhaber this week are sophomores Morgan Goldstein, Lea Zeitler, and Jacqueline Galloway, and juniors Dana Lerner and Manuela Lizarazu.
Lizarazu is the only player on Menzel’s roster that is familiar with TPC River’s Bend, as she played the 2019 Big Ten Championships there.
Lizarazu finished the 2019 Big Ten Championships in 42nd place.
Despite her team’s inexperience at TPC River’s Bend, Menzel is confident her Hawkeyes can still play well there.
“If you look at the stats over the last couple weeks, we’re a pretty good ball-striking team,” Menzel said. “I think [TPC River’s Bend] is a ball-striker’s course. Any time you get to a TPC, kind of a PGA Tour-type golf course, obviously you’re looking for good ball strikers, people who can drive it straight with decent length and then are also pretty accurate with their irons.”
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The 2021 Big Ten Women’s Golf Championships kicks off Friday morning at 8:51 a.m. Iowa will be paired with Wisconsin in tournament’s opening round.
Like the Hawkeye women, Iowa men’s golf will also be competing in Ohio this week.
The Iowa men will play in the Ohio State University-hosted Robert Kepler Intercollegiate in Columbus, Ohio. The tournament will serve as the Hawkeyes’ last before they play in the 2021 Big Ten Men’s Golf Championships at Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Indiana, next week.
The 54-hole event will begin with two rounds on Saturday and a final round on Sunday.
The tournament, to be played at Ohio State’s Scarlett Course, will feature 11 of the Big Ten’s 14 teams.
Iowa enters the event fresh of its second team win of the year — a five-shot victory at the Hawkeye Invitational last weekend at Finkbine Golf Course in Iowa City.
“[The Scarlett course] is pretty similar to Finkbine,” Hawkeye Invitational champion and Iowa senior Alex Schaake said. “It’s a little longer. The bunkering off the tees is really good there, so some strategy stuff, course management that we’re working on this week.
Thirty-ninth-ranked Iowa is the third-best team competing at the Robert Kepler Intercollegiate, behind No. 8 Illinois and No. 14 Liberty.
Schaake comes into the Robert Kepler Intercollegiate rated 11th in the PGA Tour University rankings. At the end of the college season, the top five players on that list get full status on the PGA Tour’s Korn Ferry Tour.
Live results from both the Robert Kepler Intercollegiate and the 2021 Big Ten Women’s Golf Championships can be found on GolfStat.com.