The Big Ten released its 2016-2017 men’s and women’s golf preseason honorees Wednesday with three players from each conference team making the list.
On the men’s side, sophomore Jake Brown, junior Brendan Doyle and senior Andrew Havill were named players to watch and each received Academic All-Big Ten honors last season.
Brown led the team with a 74.29 stroke average last season while playing in all 35 rounds in tournaments. Doyle also played in every tournament round last season and went 3-1-0 at the Big Ten Match Play Championship. Havill accumulated 19 rounds of shooting 75 or better, which tied for the most on the team, and he partook in every tournament round as well.
For the women, sophomore Erin Harper, freshman Elisa Pierre and senior Ana Sanjuan all corralled nominations.
A year ago Harper averaged 74.42 strokes per round, behind only graduate Camille Chevalier. Harper racked up one top-five finish, one top-10 finish and four top-25 finishes in tournament play.
Sanjuan, of Aviles, Spain, looks to finish her career at IU this season after finishing 2-0 in match play last season. Pierre qualified for the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur with a fifth-place finish in her qualifier.
The Hoosiers look to improve this season after the men finished 10th and women finished seventh in the Big Ten Tournament last season.
The men’s team kicks off its season Sept. 10 with the Wolf Run Intercollegiate in Zionsville, Indiana, while the women tee off for the first time Sept. 12 in Fort Collins, Colorado, in the Ptarmigan Ram Classic.
Reese Anderson
