Michigan
Macdonald Cup
This Week in Michigan Men's Golf: Macdonald Cup
9/23/2021 12:45:00 PM | Men's Golf
» Michigan heads to New Haven, Conn., and the Yale Golf Course for the Macdonald Cup on Saturday and Sunday.
» The Yale Golf Course will serve as one of six sites for the spring's NCAA regional play.
» For a second straight week, Patrick Sullivan will play in the No. 1 positions for the Wolverines.
» Graduate students Brendan O'Reilly and Charlie Pilon will make their first starts of the season.
THIS WEEK
Sat-Sun., Sept. 25-26 -- at Macdonald Cup (New Haven, Conn.)
Live Scoring | Yale Golf Course
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Next on the Tee: Macdonald Cup
The University of Michigan men's golf team continues its fall season with a trip to New Haven, Conn., on Saturday and Sunday (Sept. 25-26) for Yale's Macdonald Cup. The two-day, 54-hole event will feature a 14-team field playing at the Yale Golf Course. The visit to Yale also will give the Wolverines a chance to preview the course which will serve as one of six locations for the spring's NCAA regional. Selected teams will be allowed individuals, including U-M. The course is scheduled to be set up as a par 70 at 6,795 yards.
The Macdonald Cup Field
There will be 14 teams competing at the Macdonald Cup, including: Bucknell, Colgate, Cornell, Dartmouth, Fairfield, Fordham, Hartford, Harvard, Michigan, Penn, Princeton, St. Bonaventure, St. John's and Yale.
The Macdonald Cup Schedule
Thursday, Sept. 23 -- Travel Day
Friday, Sept. 24 -- Practice Round
Saturday, Sept. 25 -- First Round (18), 7:10 a.m. (tee times off Nos. 1 and 10)
Saturday, Sept. 25 -- Second Round (18), continuous play following completion of first round
Sunday, Sept. 26 -- Third Round (18), 8:50 a.m. (shotgun)
Michigan's Macdonald Cup Lineup
Michigan will travel a five-member starting group and an individual this weekend. The starting five will include senior Patrick Sullivan, freshman Hunter Thomson, graduate student Brendan O'Reilly, sophomore Will Anderson and graduate student Charlie Pilon. Sophomore Jude Kim will travel as the Wolverines' individual.
Wolverine Bites
• Michigan opened its fall season with a third-place showing at the Island Resort Intercollegiate. Picking up from where he left off last season, Will Anderson led the Wolverines with a career-best tie for seventh (69-75-74/218) as well as his second career top-10 individual finish. His opening 69 (-3) was a career low by two shots.
• Will Anderson was one of three Wolverines to start all six events a year ago. In his rookie campaign, he paced the U-M in two events, highlighted with his first career top-10 (t-9th) at Houston's Border Olympics with an even-par 216 (71-72-73) total. That tally was the lowest by a U-M freshman since Henry Spring posted a 214 (+4) tally at the 2017 Big Ten Championships. A year ago, Anderson was the only Wolverine to count all 18 rounds with a team-best 75.06 scoring average to become the first rookie to lead the team in scoring in six years (Kyle Mueller, 2015).
• In the season opener at the Island Resort Intercollegiate, six of the eight Wolverine individuals posted a round of par or better. Sophomore Will Anderson and freshman Hunter Thomson led the way, each carding 69s (-3), while junior Pier Francesco De Col and freshman Yuqi Liu each fired a 71s (-1). Senior Patrick Sullivan posted back-to-back even-par 72s, while sophomore Jude Kim added a 72 of his own.
• Patrick Sullivan posted a top-20 finish in the season opener, tying for 17th. After posting a career-best 75.33 per-round average last season, he posted U-M's lowest round with a career-low 67 (-5) -- his first career sub-70 round -- at the Mobile Bay Intercollegiate (Feb. 14-16). He has started all 18 events he has participated in during his career.
• Charlie Pilon, who will make his first start of the season at the Macdonald Cup, returns for a fifth season with the Maize and Blue after opting to accept the NCAA's COVID-19 exemption. In his prior four seasons, the Australian import played in 33 events, starting 32. He carried a 74.26 career scoring average with a career-best 73.00 mark during his junior season. A two-time Academic All-Big Ten selection, Pilon is enrolled in U-M's prestigious Stephen M. Ross School of Business.
• Fellow graduate student Brendan O'Reilly will make his first Michigan start after competing as an individual in the season opener, tying for 21st. A transfer from Illinois, O'Reilly also is taking advantage of the NCAA's extra year of eligibility. While with the Illini, he played in 27 events with 19 starts and had a career average of 73.59, posting a career-best 72.88 as a sophomore. During his time in Champaign, he helped Illinois to 13 team titles, 10 runner-up finishes, three Big Ten titles and one NCAA regional title. After graduating with a degree in accounting from Illinois, O'Reilly is pursuing a masters of accounting at U-M's prestigious Stephen M. Ross School of Business.
• All three U-M freshmen made their collegiate debuts at the Island Resort Intercollegiate. In his first collegiate start, Hunter Thomson, tied for 39th (228), while Yuqi Liu and Bavake Sihota played as individuals. Liu carded a career-best 71 (-1) to tie for 21st (224), while Sihota tied for 68th (245).
• After finishing as the runner-up in 2019, Patrick Sullivan used a 2-and-1 victory over Eastern Michigan's Tyler Rayman to win the 110th Michigan Amateur Championship at Cascade Hills Country Club this summer. Sullivan is the 16th Wolverine to hoist the Staghorn Trophy and is the first U-M golfer to win since Andrew Chapman's title run in 2013. U-M now has 26 overall titles in the state amateur's history.
Patrick Sullivan's Michigan Amateur Run
• No. 5 seed (70-69/139, -1)
• Round of 64: 6&5 win over No. 60 seed Erik Fahlen (Taylor University)
• Round of 32: 1-up win over No. 28 seed Alex Zeoli
• Round of 16: 2&1 win over No. 12 seed Charles Delong (GVSU)
• Quarterfinals: 2-up win over No. 4 seed James Piot (Michigan State & 2021 U.S. Amateur Champion)
• Semifinals: 3&1 win over No. 8 seed Colin Sikkenga (Oakland)
• Final: 2&1 win over No. 14 seed Tyler Rayman (EMU)
Up Next
Sat-Mon., Oct. 2-4 -- at Rich Harvest Farms Intercollegiate (Sugar Grove, Ill.)
Players Mentioned
