April 22, 2006
Complete Release in PDF Format
Download Free Acrobat Reader
BIG EAST Championship
Monday-Tuesday, April 24-25, 2006
8:50 a.m. (ET) Monday/Time TBD Tuesday
Lake Jovita Golf & Country Club/South Course Dade City, Fla.
Par 72/7,152 yards
Irish Prepare To Defend Back-To-Back Conference Titles Fresh off its best outing of the season (a third-place finish at the Boilermaker Invitational), Notre Dame heads to Dade City, Fla., Monday and Tuesday for the BIG EAST Conference Championship. The event will be hosted by South Florida on the South Course (par
72/7,152 yards) at the Lake Jovita Golf & Country Club, after five of the prior six conference tournaments were held at Notre Dame's Warren Golf Course.
The Irish are the two-time defending BIG EAST champions and rank second in conference history with five titles to their credit. Notre Dame is seeking to become only the second school ever to win three consecutive BIG EAST crowns on two separate occasions - the Irish previously won three in a row from 1995-97. The winner of this week's event will earn an automatic berth into the 2006 NCAA Championships, which begin May 18-20 with regional play.
Notre Dame continues to enjoy one of its most successful seasons ever in 2005-06, currently posting a school-record 294.63 stroke average with six top-six finishes and six wins over Golfweek Top 25 opponents. The Irish also are poised to have three players finish with
sub-74 stroke averages for the first time in the 77-year history of the program.
Quoting Coach Kubinski ...
"We're looking forward to this week's BIG EAST
Championship at Lake Jovita. With several new BIG
EAST teams now in the fold, it should make for a
very competitive event. While we've only teed it
up with Louisville due to the national flavor of
our schedule, I've noticed several good showings
by conference teams at various events. This
year's championship will certainly force the
winning team to play at a high level for 54 holes.
"I really like the fact that Cole (Isban)
has found his stride. Right now, when the putts
aren't falling, he's in the 74 range on a tough
day and can go very low when the putts are
dropping. His 67 in Augusta was an example of
this. He's swinging well, and his short game,
which was a little rusty a while back, has come
alive. He's one of the best anywhere when he gets
it going.
"Josh (Sandman) has been very, very
impressive both in Augusta and at Purdue. He
keeps giving himself great chances for birdie on
each hole. He is very strong in so many areas.
Most importantly, he's developed in so many areas
both on and off the course this year. He's made
himself quite a factor on this team and should
help provide a balanced attack for us in Tampa.
"Both Mark (Baldwin) and Scott
(Gustafson) have played inconsistently of late
but watching them in practice gives me great
confidence that each will rise to the occasion
this week. I've always heard senior leadership is
important, and when I watch both Mark and Scott
compete, I realize why. They've been through the
battles before and aren't shaken when faced with
adverse circumstances. The championship climate
will be one they're ready for.
"Tommy (Balderston) battled a
neck/shoulder injury through the fall and took a
while to get going this spring. While he hasn't
played an official event this season, he may have
the most tournament experience of any of our
players when combining junior and college golf.
He's a two-time all-BIG EAST selection, so he
certainly has experience in the championship
environment. He's playing so solidly right now
and driving the ball very well. I feel strongly
that Tommy can give us that round or two from the
No. 5 position, and with his talent level, it's
as if we have a capable top-of-the-lineup type
player at No. 5.
"We'll need to build on our play at
Purdue and be ready to battle. Golf is a game of
breaks. It's such a mental test and not much
separates the champs from the runners-up. The
formula is simple, though. We must take advantage
of the good breaks and easier holes and not allow
bad breaks or the tougher holes to take us out of
our rhythm. We certainly have enough talent and a
great will to compete. We'll be ready. We're
excited for this opportunity and will represent
Notre Dame with everything we have."
Dates and Times
Teams will play two rounds (36 holes) on Monday.
As the No. 2 seed, Notre Dame will be paired with
No. 1 Louisville and third-seeded Marquette for
the first day of the BIG EAST Championship,
starting with the opening round at 8:50 a.m. (ET)
from the first tee at Lake Jovita's South Course.
Competitors will tee off in 10-minute intervals,
beginning with the No. 5 golfer in the lineup and
working in reverse order, ending up with the No.
1 golfer at 9:30 a.m. (ET). The start of the
second round will follow the same format
beginning at 1:50 p.m. (ET) Monday, also from the
No. 1 tee at the South Course.
Teams will then return to the course
Tuesday for the final round with preassigned tee
times based upon the 36-hole standings. The top
six teams will go off at 8:50 a.m. (ET), with
Nos. 1-3 teeing from No. 1 and Nos. 4-6 starting
at No. 10. The seventh-12th place squads will
begin the final round at 8 a.m. (ET), with Nos.
7-9 going from No. 10 and Nos. 10-12 beginning at
the first tee.
Following The Irish
Live scoring (every nine holes) for the BIG EAST
Championship will be available through the
Golfstat web site (www.golfstat.com). Complete
results following each day's action also will be
posted on the official Notre Dame athletics web
site (www.und.com).
In addition, in-progress updates will be
available on the Notre Dame Sports Hotline
(574-631-3000) - callers should select option #9,
then press #2. Assistant sports information
director Chris Masters will be on location with
the Irish in Florida and will provide live
reports from the course at the top of every hour
during both days of competition at the BIG EAST
Championship.
The Tournament Format
A total of 12 five-man teams (60 participants)
will be participating in the BIG EAST
Championship. Conventional collegiate golf team
scoring rules will apply, with the lowest four
scores in the five-man lineup for each round
counting toward the team total. The team with the
lowest 54-hole score will be declared champion
and will receive the BIG EAST's automatic bid to
the 2006 NCAA Championship.
In case of team ties, a sudden-death
playoff will be utilized, with the top four
individual scores on each hole combined for the
team total. There will be no playoff to determine
an individual champion.
The Teams
The 12-team field for this year's BIG EAST
Championship is as follows (in order of seeding):
Louisville, Notre Dame, Marquette, South Florida,
St. John's, Villanova, Georgetown, DePaul,
Rutgers, Connecticut, Cincinnati and Seton Hall.
With the introduction of five new teams to the
conference this year (Louisville, Marquette, USF,
DePaul and Cincinnati), this will be the largest
field ever for a BIG EAST men's golf tournament,
with the previous high-water mark being a
nine-team competition from 1995-2000 (the
tournament shifted from a fall to spring event in
the 1999-00 academic year). The past four years
all have seen the BIG EAST Championship played
with a six-team field.
According to the latest ratings in the
Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index (as of April
17), Louisville (No. 50) and Notre Dame (No. 54)
stand as the top two teams in the BIG EAST field.
Marquette is third at No. 87 and is the only
other conference school among the top 100 in the
current Golfweek rankings.
In addition, the newest Golfstat rankings
were unveiled April 18 and there also are three
of this year's BIG EAST participants appearing in
that service's Top 100. No. 48 Louisville and No.
53 Notre Dame set the pace, followed by No. 94
Marquette.
Meanwhile, in the most recent
GCAA/Bridgestone Top 25 poll (released April 13),
three teams in this year's field are receiving
votes. Louisville leads the way with 24 votes
(good for 34th if the poll were extended), while
Marquette is picking up five votes (50th) and
Notre Dame is earning three votes (tie-52nd).
Head-To-Head
Entering the BIG EAST Championship, Notre Dame
has faced just one of the other 11 teams in the
field. The Irish competed against Louisville at
the Boilermaker Invitational on April 8-9 in West
Lafayette, Ind., eventually defeating the
Cardinals head-to-head by five strokes (900-905),
with the teams finishing third and fourth,
respectively, in the final tournament standings.
The Course
After a wildly successful run of five tournaments
in six years at Notre Dame's Warren Golf Course,
the BIG EAST Championship heads south to Dade
City, Fla., (located outside Tampa), and the Lake
Jovita Golf & Country Club. Both the men's and
women's conference tournaments will be played
concurrently at the facility, with the women
competing on the North Course and the men
battling on the South Course (par 72/7,152 yards).
Opening in 2000 and co-designed by PGA
Tour veteran (and 2006 U.S. Ryder Cup captain)
Tom Lehman and noted golf course achitect Kurt
Sandness, Lake Jovita is like no other Florida
layout. Its features include rolling hills,
undulating valleys, and ancient hardwood forests
dotted with freshwater lakes. The landscape and
elevation changes here are far more typical of
North Carolina than they are of Florida. In fact,
the South Course features the longest natural
drop of any golf course in the state - 94 feet
from tee to green on the par-5, 11th hole.
In 2000, Golf Digest ranked the South
Course among the nation's 10 best new upscale
courses, and recently awarded the design No. 22
on its list of the state's best courses, public
or private. The generous fairways, velvet-like
greens, and immaculate course conditions will
provide a stern test for each player in this
year's BIG EAST Championship field.
Notre Dame At The BIG EAST Championship
Notre Dame has participated in each of the past
10 BIG EAST Championships and finished among the
top three nine times since joining the conference
prior to the 1995-96 academic year. To date, the
Irish have won five titles (1995, 1996, 1997,
2004, 2005), which puts them second in league
history behind the nine crowns won by St. John's
from 1979-89. George Thomas served as the head
coach for Notre Dame's first three BIG EAST
victories, while John Jasinski guided the Irish
to the 2004 title and current head coach Jim
Kubinski was at the helm when Notre Dame won last
year's event.
In addition to their five championships,
the Irish have finished as tournament runner-up
three times (1998 - tie with St. John's, 2002,
2003) and took third place honors in 2000.
Notre Dame golfers also have won medalist
honors four times, tying Virginia Tech for the
third-highest total in conference history behind
St. John's (seven) and Providence (six). The most
recent Irish individual champion was crowned in
2005 when current senior tri-captain Mark Baldwin
won the weather-shortened BIG EAST Championship
with a five-over par 75. Other Notre Dame golfers
who were medalists at the conference tournament
include: Bill Moore (1995), Todd Vernon (1997)
and Steve Ratay (2001 - three-way tie with Brian
Krusoe of Virginia Tech and Andrew Svoboda of St.
John's).
Potent Notables On The Irish At The BIG EAST Championship
Notre Dame joins Virginia Tech and St.
John's as the only three schools in the 25-year
history of the BIG EAST Championship to win three
consecutive titles. The Irish recorded their hat
trick from 1995-97, Virginia Tech did so from
2001-03 and St. John's actually posted a pair of
"four-peats" from 1981-84 and 1986-89.
Notre Dame's 32-stroke win in 1997 is the
second-largest margin of victory in BIG EAST
Championship history. St. John's finished 34
shots ahead of the field to win the 1988
conference title.
Of the five players who will represent
Notre Dame at this year's BIG EAST Championship,
four have earned all-conference citations and
three of them have done so twice. Senior
tri-captain Mark Baldwin took the honors in 2003
and 2005 (medalist), senior Tommy Balderston
picked up the award in 2003 and 2004, junior Cole
Isban was tapped in each of his first two seasons
with the Irish (2004 and 2005), and senior
tri-captain Scott Gustafson garnered his all-BIG
EAST plaque in 2003.
Notre Dame will start a freshman at the
BIG EAST Championship for the fifth consecutive
year when rookie Josh Sandman steps to the No. 1
tee on Monday morning. In three of the previous
four years, an Irish freshman has gone on to earn
all-conference recognition (Ryan Marshall in
2002; Tommy Balderston, Mark Baldwin and Scott
Gustafson in 2003; and Cole Isban in 2004). Last
year, Mike King was the new kid on the block for
Notre Dame, just missing an all-BIG EAST citation
of his own with a tie for ninth place at 10-over
par 80 (top seven players in the field are
awarded all-conference status).
The second-round leader at the BIG EAST
Championship has not won the conference title
since 2002, when Virginia Tech protected its lead
on the final day and defeated Notre Dame by 17
shots. In 2003, the Irish had a four-stroke edge
on the Hokies going into the third round, but
ended up falling by two shots. Then, in 2004,
Notre Dame returned the favor, erasing Tech's
five-stroke advantage with a final-round charge
to win by six.
Although it's just six years old, the
Warren Golf Course at Notre Dame already has
played host to five BIG EAST Championships,
second only to the TPC at Avenel (Potomac, Md.),
which was the site of 11 conference tournaments,
including 10 in a row from 1987-96.
Tourney Rewind: 2005 BIG EAST Championship
Notre Dame claimed its second consecutive BIG
EAST Conference Championship (and fifth overall)
on April 24, 2005, when the Irish were declared
the tournament champions after a rare April
snowstorm dropped two inches of snow on Notre
Dame's Warren Golf Course, resulting in the
cancellation of the final two rounds.
The Irish wound up defending their BIG
EAST title by five shots over Georgetown,
rallying from as many as seven shots down at the
turn to card a 31-over par 311 in the first (and
only) round that was played in gusty winds with
occasional snow showers. The Hoyas finished
second at 316 (+36), posting their best
conference finish since winning the crown in
1998. Rutgers (318, +38) came in third for its
highest result since a similar third-place
showing in 2001.
Mark Baldwin wound up as the tournament
medalist with a five-over par 75 in the opening
round, becoming the fourth Notre Dame golfer ever
to win the BIG EAST individual title. It also was
the second medalist citation of Baldwin's career
- he took top honors in a home dual match with
No. 11 TCU back on April 9, 2005, after carding a
three-under par 137 that included a course and
school-record 63 in the first round.
Baldwin also was one of three Irish
players to earn a spot on the all-BIG EAST team,
having made the squad for the second time in his
career after an initial appearance in 2003. Eric
Deutsch shot a seven-over par 77 to tie for third
place, the best finish of his career, and found
his way back on the all-BIG EAST team for the
second consecutive year. Likewise, Cole Isban was
an all-league pick for the second year in a row
after tying for seventh place at nine-over par 79.
Mike King turned his third top-10 finish
of the '04-05 season, tying for ninth place at
10-over par 80. Meanwhile, Scott Gustafson ended
up in a 21st-place tie at 14-over par 84.
The Ranking File
One of the ways Notre Dame has been able to
inject itself into the conversation as one of the
nation's upper-echelon programs has been its play
against some of the other elite teams in the
country. This season, the Irish have defeated six
Top 25 opponents (according to Golfweek),
including three in the past two tournaments
alone. What's more, the Irish have ousted 11
ranked teams since head coach Jim Kubinski
arrived on the Notre Dame campus in January 2005.
In 2005-06 alone, the Irish have
dispatched No. 3 Florida (Shoal Creek
Intercollegiate), No. 12 Tennessee (Administaff
Augusta State Invitational), No. 16 Texas (The
Prestige at PGA WEST), No. 16 Minnesota
(Boilermaker Invitational), No. 17 Alabama (Shoal
Creek) and No. 23 Northwestern (Boilermaker). All
rankings are taken from the Golfweek index at the
start of the tournament.
Measuring Stick
A good indication of the progress Notre Dame has
made in the short time Jim Kubinski has been head
coach can be found in the team's stroke average.
Currently at 294.63, it would shatter the old
school record by nearly four shots (298.29 in
1999-2000). In addition, the Irish presently have
three players with stroke averages at 74.00 or
lower (min. 10 rounds) - Cole Isban (73.19), Mark
Baldwin (73.52), and Scott Gustafson (73.67),
with freshman Josh Sandman (73.17) needing to
play four more rounds to join that group. In the
77-year history of the Notre Dame program, the
Irish have never had a trio score lower than
75.32 for an entire season (1999-2000 - Todd
Vernon at 74.18, Steve Ratay at 74.54 and Alex
Kent at 75.32).
One other item to watch is Notre Dame's
progress on a round-by-round basis in each
tournament. This season, the Irish are averaging
a 297.22 in their opening round before trimming
that score to 293.78 in round two. However, Notre
Dame has saved its best round for last, firing a
292.89 on average this season.
Tough Enough
When it comes to scheduling, the philosophy of
Notre Dame head coach Jim Kubinski centers around
playing in the nation's top tournaments on the
country's best courses in order to prepare his
team for postseason competition. Heading into the
BIG EAST Championship, the Irish schedule is
ranked 53rd in the nation, according to the
latest Golfweek rankings (as of April 17). No
other squad in this year's BIG EAST field has
played a harder schedule, with Louisville (No.
81), USF (No. 108) and Marquette (No. 138) the
only other teams among the top 150 nationally in
that category.
Upon closer inspection, nine of the 10
tournaments Notre Dame has played this year are
ranked among the 51 toughest in the nation for
the 2005-06 season by Golfweek (as of April 17),
including five in the top 30. Leading the way is
the Administaff Augusta State Invitational
(12th), followed by the CordeValle Collegiate
(20th), Shoal Creek Intercollegiate (22nd),
Gopher Invitational (26th) and Coca-Cola Duke
Classic (29th).
Some of the premier courses the Irish
already have played this year include: Shoal
Creek Country Club in Birmingham (site of the
1984 and 1990 PGA Championships), the famed PGA
WEST facility in La Quinta, Calif. (site of
numerous PGA Tour events in the past two
decades), the TPC of Myrtle Beach (S.C.), and the
Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex/Kampen Course in
West Lafayette, Ind. (site of three previous NCAA
regionals/finals and host of the 2008 NCAA Men's
Golf Championships).
Last Time Out: Boilermaker Invitational
Notre Dame fired the second-best round of the day
with a five-over par 293 on April 9 to lock up a
solid third-place finish at the 12-team
Boilermaker Invitational, which was contested on
the Kampen Course (par 72/7,083 yards) at
Purdue's Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex in West
Lafayette, Ind. En route to their best team
finish of the season, the Irish completed the
two-day event with a score of 36-over par 900
(307-300-293).
Junior tri-captain Cole Isban and
freshman Josh Sandman each collected a share of
second place in the 62-man field, despite varying
final-round results. Isban came into the day two
shots off the lead, but couldn't make up any
ground and ended up with a four-over par 220
(74-72-74). Meanwhile, Sandman charged hard from
the middle of the pack with the second-best score
of the day, a final-round 69, to match Isban's
220 total (77-74-69).
Senior tri-captain Scott Gustafson ended
up tied for 30th place at the Boilermaker
Invitational with a 15-over par 231 (80-76-75).
Fellow senior tri-captain Mark Baldwin was among
a five-way tie in 38th place at 17-over par 233
(80-78-75), while junior Adam Gifford wrapped up
his first tournament of the season in a
50th-place deadlock at 21-over par 237 (76-83-78).
Next Up For The Irish: The Maxwell (May 13-14)
Notre Dame will close out the 2005-06 regular
season May 13-14 when it heads to Ardmore, Okla.,
for The Maxwell, to be played at Dornick Hills
Country Club. It will be the first-ever
appearance for the Irish at the prestigious
tournament, which is co-hosted by Oklahoma State
and Oklahoma, and is considered one of the top
prep events for the NCAA regionals, scheduled for
the following weekend in Orlando (East), Chardon,
Ohio (Central) and Tucson (West).
