Indiana University Athletics
Previewing The Spring Season With Mike Mayer
2/6/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
Feb. 6, 2007
Indiana men's golf head coach Mike Mayer sat down with IUHOOSIERS.com to share his thoughts on the upcoming spring season.
General thoughts entering the spring season:
"First of all, it was a difficult fall in a lot of aspects. We played, without a doubt, our most demanding schedule since I've been at Indiana, both as an assistant and now as a head coach. With a difficult schedule on a lot of really difficult golf courses this fall, the combination of the two made it a difficult fall. I look forward to spring for a lot of reasons. As far as schedule and golf courses go, we have a little break to start with in Mexico, where the golf course is playable, as long as conditions allow, and that will give us an early chance to shoot some numbers. It's a good field, but coming out of the winter we are looking for an opportunity to both play well and be competitive. Then we go into Pinehurst and the competition increases in both the difficulty of the golf course and the quality of the field. As we progress through the spring, almost week-by-week, both the golf course gets tougher and the field gets better. We're really looking forward to spring for a lot of reasons - we know that we're a little better than we played in the fall, and we're anxious to show that. We played so very, very well last spring, we're all excited about the opportunity to do it again. We really feel that we have the personnel in place to do it again."
On how the winter has gone:
"We've had a good winter. We've had a chance this winter to play a lot of golf so far, we've played in tournaments both during the semester break and at the Jones Cup, and we feel like even though we will be coming right out of the winter to go to our first event of the spring, we'll be prepared. We're really excited to get back into competition."
On the lineup heading into the spring:
"Fall is a chance to explore a lot and give people the opportunity to play, and that's what we wanted to do. We mixed the lineups up a lot, and now as we progress through the spring, we'll try to solidify the lineup. We think we did that this fall, so now what we are looking to do is one, to determine the top five to six players as quickly as we can do that, and two, we need to become a little bit more consistent. We had very good play from almost everyone on the team in the fall, but now we have to get them on the same page at the same time.
"Jorge (Campillo) leads the way for us, no question about that. He's one of the best, if not the best player in the Big Ten, but we need a good supporting cast. We need Santiago (Quirarte), who did not have a very good fall, to come back in the spring and play the way he played the last two years and the way he is capable of playing. Santiago's worked extremely hard in the offseason and we really expect him to be our rock and we really need that. That will give players like Seth (Brandon) and Drew (Allenspach) the opportunity to be a little up and down. They are both streaky, which can work to our advantage, if we have the player like Santiago in there posting those consistently good scores and giving Seth and Drew the opportunity to go for it once and a while. They are the type of players that can do that and shoot low numbers. We're still a little up in the air about the five spot, and we are going to give some players a chance, but no question, leading the way are Alex (Martin) and Brandon (Pike). Hopefully one of them will emerge or somebody else emerges and we can get the lineup pretty well solidified after spring break."
On hosting the Pinehurst Intercollegiate again this season:
"This will be the third year of the tournament and last year was the first year that we hosted the event. Pinehurst is such a great venue and No. 8 is a championship course, so we are really looking forward to it. It's an 18-team field, which is larger than a lot of fields. It is also a three-day event where we play 18, 18, 18, so we won't have the grueling 36-hole day to encounter. Pinehurst will be a quality field on a quality golf course, and there is no better place to be in the spring than Pinehurst, N.C."
