Second Wind

There's moments in life – age 53 for this one, apparently – where you realize that you're too old for something. I took a redeye home from Oregon on Sunday night/Monday morning, expecting to do my typical "I'll get a few hours of sleep on the plane and then I can power through Monday with maybe just an afternoon nap before catching up on sleep Monday night."

Nope.

My flight left Portland at midnight and landed at Midway at 5:30 am yesterday. I was joined on that flight by the Ohio State and Purdue golf teams (the Illini team flies private on long trips like that and were likely already in Champaign by the time our flight took off). If you want to know why Illinois has finished first (13 times) or second (4 times) in the last seventeen Big Ten Golf Championships, there's just one more reason why. We treat golf like we're a top-5 program nationally (because we are) while Purdue golfers are on a Southwest redeye overnight followed by an early morning van ride to West Lafayette.

The second wind I expected to receive driving from Midway to Champaign – sun's up, just got my blood pumping as I walked to my car in the off-airport lot, etc – did not happen. I had to stop twice on the drive to Champaign to walk around the car to wake myself up. Got home at 8:15 am and immediately went to sleep. Woke up after lunch. Tried to get some work done, went right back to sleep from 3:00 to 5:00. Tried again to get my brain in gear, failed, went back to bed at 10:00. "I'll take the redeye and it will save me an entire day!" Wrong.

So now it's Tuesday late morning as I attempt to put this weekend in perspective. I mean, if I'm going to spend the money to travel to Portland to cover the Big Ten Golf Championships (as the only media member in attendance at the entire event), I should probably write about it, right? It's been nearly 39 hours since UCLA pulled away and won it on the final three holes. Maybe... find a time to write some words about it, Robert?

Here are those words.

"Levels of satisfaction." It's a topic I've written about a lot over the last 17+ years. The old "who is happier - an Illini football fan after a 6-6 season or an Ohio State football fan after an 11-1 season?" debate. I used to write about it when I'd attend the Missouri Valley conference title game every year (back when I lived in St. Louis), talking about how the Northern Iowa fans seemed way more excited winning the MVC title and getting a 13-seed in the dance than Wisconsin fans felt after losing in the conference quarters and "only" getting a 3-seed in the NCAAs. Some have agreed with me that there are levels to winning; others have responded with a "second place is no different than 17th place" view towards it all (essentially, "if you're not first, you're last.")

Illini men's golf is perhaps the only team I follow where I've been in "if you're not first, you're last" mode. It is perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay Mike Small. He built a program where second place at Big Tens is a disappointment. Where "it's been THREE YEARS since we won the conference tournament?" is an actual thing. Let's talk about that for a bit before we get to Sunday.

We'll start with this:

13 firsts, four seconds. And, it should be noted, if the Pac 12 schools had not been added in 2024, it would be 15 firsts and two seconds. The only two times Illini golf has been beaten by an original Big Ten member these last seventeen years: Minnesota won in 2015 and Northwestern won in 2024. The last two years it has been UCLA taking the conference title. Here's the top five from Sunday:

1. UCLA -8
2. Illinois -4
3. Washington +2
4. Rutgers +10
5. USC +14

And here's the top five without the Pac 12 schools:

1. Illinois -4
2. Rutgers +10
3. Purdue +16
4. Nebraska +17
5. Minnesota +18

Just for fun let's do last year as well. The final scores from the 2025 Big Ten Golf Championships in Baltimore:

1. UCLA +2
2. Illinois +3
3. Michigan State +14
4. Oregon +15
5. Ohio State +17

And then the top five without the Pac 12 schools:

1. Illinois +3
2. Michigan State +14
3. Ohio State +17
4. Wisconsin +18
5. Indiana +20

"Robert are you saying that we wouldn't have won 13 of 14 from 2010 to 2023 if we were in a tougher conference?"

Yes. I'm absolutely saying that. It's always been the case. No one wins 13 of 14 in any sport unless there's some huge built-in advantage (in this case, the one cold-weather Big Ten school that invests in golf).

"Robert, are you saying that this means our long run has been a bit of a mirage?"

Absolutely not. We're one of the five best programs in the country the last 15 years. If anyone ever tries to suggest that Illini golf is only good because the Big Ten is bad, give them this statistic.

The most Match Play appearances at the NCAA Championships (match play for the final eight teams began in 2009):

1. Oklahoma State (10)
T2. Illinois (8)
T2. Texas (8)
4. Oklahoma (7)
5. Georgia Tech (6)

So no, don't take "it's harder to to win the Big Ten now that there's actual competition" to mean that Illinois wasn't as dominant as those 13 titles in 14 years seemed to indicate. We have dominated a weak conference... and then powered through NCAAs to make the second-most match play appearances of all time.

And there we are. After exactly 1,000 words, I have properly framed what I observed on Sunday. Now I can talk about it.

It was so much fun to be there. The second wind I thought I'd capture once the sun came up and I got off my redeye flight? We captured that on Sunday morning and ran down UCLA. It's just that the hole dug on Saturday was too deep and UCLA pulled away (pretty much just on the final three holes). Here's how I experienced it.

At the end of Saturday's round, I asked Mike Small if it would take a similar comeback to 2016. That year, Illinois was in third place after the second round, eight shots back of Iowa. And then Illinois put up what is debated as the single greatest round in NCAA golf history, a 24-under 264, to win by 13 shots. This time, the deficit was nearly twice as much (15 shots). Would it take the same kind of day? Here was Small's answer:

"That course was a lot harder than this golf course. A lot more penal. Conditions were up and it was windy. Tomorrow there's no conditions here. It's gonna be a hard hill to climb. We're gonna need some help from them. Our job is to come out and put pressure on them early, in the first three or four holes. If we can do that, then maybe we have a chance. If not, it's gonna be a long, five-hour coronation."

And then it all... happened? Exactly how he described it, that's how it happened. Before you could blink – while the last Illini golfer to tee off was only on the first hole – Illinois passed Washington and moved to only 10 shots back of UCLA:

Even ten shots feels insurmountable, though. Especially, as Mike Small explained, without any wind. Sure, if there are conditions, then maybe some UCLA freshmen start playing tight and find themselves with a few double bogeys. But without any conditions, no one is really gonna put up a big number.

But then, for the next 90 minutes, it kind of just stayed right there. (10, 11, or 12 shots back of UCLA). Right up until Max holed out on eight. I had just peeled off of Max's group and was walking up the 9th fairway to see how Freddie Turnell and Ryan Voois were doing. I had watched Max's tee shot on 8, saw that he was in good position in the fairway, and then headed over to nine. Just after Voois hit his tee shot on 8, I heard a roar. I saw Voois throw his hands up from the tee and so I figured Max had holed out from the fairway for eagle. But I didn't tweet the news until I watched him walk all the way to the hole and pull his ball out of the cup. Voois could have been celebrating a great shot for, say, the Washington kid playing with Max.

Now I'm locked in on Max. He hits a perfect drive on 9 and then hits this approach:

He rolled in that putt for birdie (which means he was -3 on his last two holes) and for the first time the full comeback felt possible. Again, 15 shots is a TON of ground to make up. But as Max (the final Illini player of five) made the turn, we officially entered the back nine having made up half the ground required. 15-shot lead for UCLA at the start, 7-shot lead for UCLA to start the back nine. Was this really happening?

Then it stalled again. The lead pushed back to nine. After watching the 12th hole for a bit, I walked ahead to the 14th hole to see how the two transfers (Dane Huddleston and Freddie Turnell) were doing. And as I got there, both of them hit it under the same tree. The one tree you can't be under because there's water up by the green so you can't hit a low runner. I tweeted this at the time:

It's also when I snapped this photo of a dude who sat down on the cart path to have some chips and salsa from the cooler he'd been carrying all day. Look, if I had a nickel for every time I've seen someone sit down on the cart path at a golf tournament to enjoy some chips and perfectly-chilled salsa, I'd have exactly one nickel.

Both Dane and Freddie would go on to bogey 14. Which, if I'm remembering correctly, left us eight shots back. So I bailed on those matches and walked ahead to 16 to see how Trey Marrion was doing. Marrion was sick with the flu on Saturday (according to Coach Small, he vomited four times on Friday night) so Jake Birdwell had filled in for him on Saturday. Now Trey was back out there and playing well.

(Here's where I hide the excuse-y sentence that says if Marrion isn't sick and he simply shoots even par on Saturday, Illinois wins the Big Ten title.)

Marrion misses a tricky birdie putt on 16 but then he catches fire. He stuffs it close on 17 and makes the birdie (trigger warning for those who think a "media member" covering an event should not cheer because... I cheer here).

And then he hits a solid chip on the par-five 18th to give himself an another birdie look. And in the time between those two putts, things were happening. A friend texted me that UCLA's top guy got a double bogey on 14 (the tournament was live on BTN at this point). As I was walking with Marrion's group on 18, I heard a roar that turned out to be Max making birdie on 15. There were no UCLA fans there (besides parents), no Washington fans, no... any other fans so if you heard a roar, something good had happened for Illinois.

By the time I reach the 18th green with Trey, we are only two back of UCLA. And then two things happened. Ryan Voois's birdie posted on 16. And Trey did this on 18:

You didn't watch it. Why didn't you watch it? You should watch it and think of the context. Just picture him sitting in the hotel with the flu on Saturday, finally keeping food down Saturday night, giving it a go at the range on Sunday morning and thinking he can go, and then finishing off a low-round-of-the-entire-tournament 65 like that. How could I not cheer?

I can't exactly remember which came first (the Marrion putt or the Voois birdie) but after this, I checked my phone and we were tied. Somehow we came from FIFTEEN SHOTS DOWN to tie it. And if we play the "whoever is further from even par is the team making the move" game, we did it (at that point) by going -10 while UCLA was +5. They were choking a little, we were surging a lot.

But the thing about coming all the way back like that is that it's still only tied. And UCLA – I saw at least four of their putts lip out – were due for some of those putts to finally start dropping. And they did. And we lost. A double-bogey from Max on the 17th hole was part of it, but here's what won it for UCLA: sophomore Baylor Larabee birdied 16 & 18 and freshman Josh Kim birdied 16 & 17. The first three of those four birdies hit the scoreboard (plus Max's double only slightly offset by Voois making birdie on 18) and suddenly we were down four shots with only Josh Kim and Max out on the course. It went from "are we really doing this?" to "OVER" in maybe 12 minutes time.

The Illini players? Devastated (a few with tears). The UCLA players? Besides dousing Josh Kim with water after his final putt (he won the individual Big Ten title) it was way more subdued than last year's celebration in Baltimore. Probably because they knew that with their +2 compared to the Illini's -9 on the day, this was a college basketball game where you lead by 22 at halftime, let the other team come all the way back to tie it, and then breath a sigh of relief when you win it in the last four minutes. It was more "whew" than "yay."

And honestly, after three days, it was very simple. The rest of the UCLA team was even par and then freshman Josh Kim was eight-under. UCLA finished -8 and won the tournament by four shots. One freshman was red hot and carried his team to the title. I tip my cap.

I sat down with Mike Small and senior Ryan Voois afterwards. I hope you'll listen to the Small interview, but you MUST listen to the Voois interview. That's an order:

Mike Small May 3

0:00

/400.2986666666667

1×

Ryan Voois May 3

0:00

/505.6

1×

That brings so many things together for me. So many things I've written over the years. I'll just make you a quick list:

• We finished second and I... somewhat don't care? The destination would have been nice, but I really enjoyed the journey this weekend. What a comeback.
• I enjoy having the kind of access that gets me up close and personal with a team. This feels like Camp Rantoul used to feel, and I miss it so much.
• This university cranks out FANTASTIC people and I enjoy telling their stories.
• Cheering while covering the competition – like I do in the stands at football games now – is really the key to everything for me.

Two things will come out tomorrow. One, the regional seedings come out and, as Voois explained there, we're likely bound for Athens as the 2-seed. And two, the PGA Tour University standings will be updated. It's the way for senior-year college golfers to earn status on the various PGA tours. The #1 guy on the list goes straight to the PGA Tour, #2 through #10 get Korn Ferry Tour cards, and #11 through #25 gain PGA Tour Americas tour cards.

Voois (the only Illini senior) was #28 coming into the Big Tens. With his third place finish, I'm almost certain he'll jump into the top-25 tomorrow. So then it will come down to his results at the regional and the NCAA's to see if he makes the top 25 and gets that PGA Tour Americas card. I'm fully invested. I don't want to add too much pressure here, and if he or his parents are reading this I apologize for writing this and adding to the pressure, but... I'm fully invested. Let's do this.

Which is the whole point for me. Since I apparently don't care about wins and losses for my Illini teams (only half kidding), the payoffs on the investments I make arrive when an Illini athlete succeeds as a professional. Ayo and TSJ leading Minnesota to the second round of the playoffs (until Ant could return) provides me with endless joy (TSJ - 16 points last night in a win AT San Antonio). I have a Sunday tradition going on 7 years now where I check the box score after the Tampa Bay game is finished to see how Chase McLaughlin did on field goals and extra points. I'm addicted to Illini athletes succeeding in the pros.

And you can't convince me that Ryan Voois won't A) lead the Illini back to La Costa with a top-5 at the Athens Regional and B) climb into the top-25 to get his PGA Tour Americas card. I'll be there pulling for him (and documenting it) when it happens.

And then, next year, with only one senior graduating, I'll be there when we take the Big Ten trophy back at Baltusrol. And I'll be there when we finally win a national title. And I'll be there when we win a basketball title, too.

Hmmm... maybe I do care about the outcomes a little bit.