Chippewa Golfers Take Their Swings In MAC Championships

NOBLESVILLE, Ind. – All the preliminaries are out of the way.

Now, it's tee it up and go. If Mother Nature cooperates.

The Central Michigan golf team will partake in the Mid-American Conference Championships this weekend at Purgatory Golf Club. The Chippewas are the host team for the 10-team event, which is scheduled to begin on Friday morning.

The 54-hole, three-day tournament is scheduled to conclude on Sunday at Purgatory, with its rolling terrain that will play to par 72 and just over 6,000 yards.

Friday's opening round has been pushed back to an 11 a.m. start from its original 9 a.m. tee off because of a daylong rain on Thursday and a forecast that called for overnight rain.

"The unknown is the weather," first-year CMU coach Jim Earle said. "We need to be as patient as possible out there and obviously minimize those big numbers that really have hampered us in this spring. There's just a lot of unknowns with the weather -- the wind, the rain, and the course conditions."

Kent State, which is ranked 10^th nationally, is again the favorite and is seeking to extend its MAC Championships win streak to 21. The Golden Flashes have won every MAC title since the league began crowning a women's golf champion in 1999.

That said, the Chippewas enter the tournament harboring hopes of a strong showing. CMU set a slew of program scoring records in placing third in the MAC Fall Preview at Purgatory, and finished ahead of six MAC squads in that event.

"We have some positive memories of the golf course and what we did in the fall," Earle said. "It's not like it's an easy course. For some reason, the sight lines are good to our eyes. We're not guiding the golf ball, we're getting up there and swinging. I think it's a driver's golf course and that plays into our strengths."

That performance came in the midst of an outstanding fall, when CMU posted four top-five finishes in five tournaments.

The spring season has not been as kind, on the whole, to the Chippewas, though they did finish fifth in the 10-team Bowling Green Dolores Black Falcon Invitational two weeks.

That was their best placing of the spring and, Earle hopes, a sign that perhaps his Chippewas have turned a corner.

"The team's hitting the ball well," he said. "We played pretty well a couple of weeks ago. We're in a good place. I thought everybody drove the ball exceptionally well in the practice round (on Thursday) in some tough conditions."

Central Michigan University Athletics

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