Boys Golf: Experienced Red Devils Have High Hopes for State

Playing The Den at Fox Creek in Bloomington is a different experience for state qualifiers in the fall than it is for casual golfers in the summer, sophomore golfer Jeff Yoo said.

In addition to the autumn winds that make the links-style course designed by Arnold Palmer harder to navigate this time of year, the state-title atmosphere adds nerve-wracking pressure.

“It’s a different type of tournament,” Yoo said. “This one, you feel like it’s the pinnacle of it all.”

Yoo and his Red Devils teammates are among the 12 3A schools that qualified for the two-day team tournament in Bloomington Friday and Saturday. They finished second in the Wheaton-Warrenville South Regional on Oct. 4 and second in the Bartlett Sectional Monday morning. 

Each team this weekend will be composed of six golfers. All six play two rounds, the top four two-day totals from each team are added together and the lowest total wins. Hinsdale Central finished fifth in the team competition in 2010 and four of their six participants this year have one year of state experience.   

Seniors Harry Boling, Trevor Jay, and Curtiss House will play alongside junior David Whinery, and sophomores Yoo and Tom Olson. Sixth-year head coach Jess Krueger said his team has an outside chance of finishing first, but only if the golfers keep their scores consistently under 80. The state tournament, he said, is all about everybody coming together and playing well on the same day.   

“They don’t have to do anything superhuman or anything outside of what they’re capable of,” Krueger said. “If they just play their averages, they’ll be in the mix.”

Jay, Whinery, Olson and Yoo all hit under 80 in Monday’s sectional. Whinery’s 75 was the team’s best. 

The top three teams from the 2010 state tournament are back in 2011: Naperville North, New Trier, and defending champ Lake Forest. Nevertheless, Jay, who is one of the Red Devils’ two senior captains, said he thinks the field is pretty open and Hinsdale Central’s experience will be valuable.

“The goal is to go down there and win,” he said.

To do that, the team will have to play under control and hit fairways that can be elusive on a course containing few trees to slow down that fall wind.

“The wind-break they just cut—cornstalks,” Krueger said with a smile. “It is not a course where you can blast it and get away with it. … You have to place your ball on that course.”

The Red Devils will depart for Bloomington Thursday morning and will play a practice round at The Den after they arrive. House will be among the first four golfers to tee off Friday morning at 8:30 a.m.

All six golfers from every qualifying team, and numerous at-large golfers from non-qualifying teams, are part of the individual competition. Jay said he’d love to have a good individual finish, “but at the end of the day it comes down to how we finish as a team.”