After a summer of individual tournaments around the country and the world, the Iowa men’s golf team is back together in Iowa City and is set to begin its fall schedule this weekend in South Bend, Indiana, for the Fighting Irish Classic at Warren Golf Course.

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“I’m just excited to get the season going again, this is my favorite time of year,” coach Tyler Stith told *The Daily Iowan*. “I told the guys that in our meeting last week, everybody’s back in school, everybody’s optimistic, and we’ve got football right around the corner, and the weather’s great. Everyone’s been working extremely hard and I’m just excited to kind of get things going again.”

The Hawkeyes’ roster looks almost identical to the list from last spring. All seven of Iowa’s 2021-22 players are back this season and Iowa added an eighth name to its roster in freshman Hogan Hansen.

Iowa’s 2022 fall schedule looks similar to its 2021 fall slate, too. Two of the Hawkeyes’ five events this fall will be trips to destinations they competed at last fall. Iowa finished 10th at the 2021 Fighting Irish Classic and ninth at the Williams Cup in Wilmington, North Carolina, which the Hawkeyes will travel to in late October. 

“Pretty similar to years past, a couple of courses that I’ll be familiar with, so that’s always nice,” senior Mac McClear said. “But then we got a couple of new ones, which will be really good. We got one at our home course, Blue Top Ridge, this fall, which I’m excited for, and then we get a new one, we’re going to Inverness in Ohio, which I’ve heard that place is really good. So, I think we got a really good schedule this year.”

McClear and fellow senior Ronan Kleu led Iowa at last season’s Fighting Irish Classic at Notre Dame, each finishing in a tie for eighth individually. 

Two weeks after the Hawkeyes’ season opener in South Bend, Stith’s bunch will travel to the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, for the Inverness Invitational. 

If history is any indication, as McClear said, that place is really good. 

In the club’s history dating back to 1903, Inverness has hosted six Major Championships including four U.S. Opens and has boasted champions like Hale Irwin and Paul Azinger.

For its third event and the first tournament of October, Iowa will travel to West Lafayette, Indiana, to compete in the Purdue Fall Invitational at the Kampen Course at Purdue from Oct. 10-11. 2022 will mark the first season Iowa has competed at this event.

The following week, the Hawkeyes will host the Iowa Fall Classic at Blue Top Ridge Golf Course in Riverside, Iowa. 

This will be Iowa’s first time hosting a fall tournament since 2019, when the Hawkeyes housed the GolfWeek Conference Challenge in Cedar Rapids. Iowa had hosted a fall event in various locations throughout Eastern Iowa from 2009-2019 before the two-year hiatus. 

The Hawkeyes will conclude their fall season at the Williams Cup from Oct. 21-23. McClear led the team in North Carolina last season with a 23rd-place finish. 

“The schedule looks great,” senior Garrett Tighe said. “I mean, obviously, coach does a great job of getting us in some great tournaments. So, I think our schedule is very strong and sets us up for success.”