The Cyclones have had four weekends of golf, and wrapped up their fall season with the Big 12 Match Play on Sunday.

The fall season contained the worst finishes the team has had at the first three matches of the year under coach Andrew Tank’s tenure since 2010.

Let’s take a look at the first four events for the team, as well as look forward a bit to what awaits them for when they return to play its spring season in January.

Badger Invitational

The team loo to have much to strive for, building off of back to back Top-30 finishes in the national rankings the past two years. Every single golfer was coming back, and the team was ready to take advantage of their familiarity.

While eighth place is not something to be ashamed of, it’s not a desirable way to get back to the situation the Cyclones were in last year, i.e. Big 12 title competitors. A familiar face was at the top of the rankings for the Cyclones and for the competition. Waukee, Iowa, native Tripp Kinney started the preseason as an All-American and he answered the call in Madison, golfing three solid rounds and finishing just two strokes away from being the best golfer of the weekend. He hit a 70-68-68, going under par all three rounds.

Other than Kinney, juniors Lachlan Barker and Ricky Costello both had strong starts to their seasons, finishing tied for 27th and 29th, respectively. Frank Lindwall and Sam Vincent also contributed to the team score, but finished outside the Top-50. Danny Daniels and Jackson Kalz competed as individuals, finishing 78th and tied for 79th (with Vincent) respectively.

Windon Memorial Classic

Instead of using the Badger Invitational as a building block, this invitational caused Iowa State to start back from square one in terms of putting together a solid season. After being in the top-six after the first round in Illinois, the team put together one of the worst rounds by any team all weekend — a 306 to put them out of contention for the win — and a much better 284 was only good to put them in 10th place for the tournament.

Sam Vincent had maybe his best three rounds of the year so far. He shot a 77 the first day, but then followed it up with a solid 70-72 to put him tied for 35th on the leaderboard. Other than Vincent, it was a troublesome course for Iowa State. Barker, Kinney, and Costello hovered just inside the Top-50 mark, and Lindwall placed 55th. 

Again, it was more of the same at the top, with Notre Dame picking up the win by five strokes, and schools like Mississippi and Kansas again placing far ahead of the Cyclones. Iowa State had a bit of a break before hitting the greens again.

Fighting Irish Classic

If there were consistencies in this early season, it’s that Kinney will be putting out Top-10 finishes until 2030, and Notre Dame will be dominant in the early season invitationals. But it was another weekend to forget for the Cyclones, finishing in eighth place again, this time out of 14. Notre Dame was at the top for its third win of the early season, this time with North Carolina and Iowa rounding out the top three. The Cyclones finished 30 strokes behind the leader.

As previously stated, Kinney is always good for a solid performance, and he put together a 70-71-70 to put himself ninth in the medalist race. Kinney and Barker performed very well, with Barker finishing tied for 18th, but other than that it was a forgettable two days for the team, with Lindwall, Vincent, and Costello all finishing outside the Top-40.

With the three invitationals not going the way the team wanted them to, it seemed to surprise the team a bit that they weren’t able to at least bounce back and put together one solid weekend. It was either a bad round team start, a bad round in the middle of the weekend, or one at the end that have doomed the Cyclones to their worst start under Coach Tank. They weren’t too high on themselves going into Big 12 match play, seeded ninth and starting off their weekend against the top seed.

Big 12 Match Play

Despite the slow start, this is actually the best the team has done at Big 12 play in a while. So a rough start for the team was still confusing, but left them with less of a sour taste in their mouth until January. As for the scores, the team went 1-4 on the weekend, highlighted only by a three-win and three-tie performance against TCU. While those four losses are hard to swallow, it’s not like they got blown out. They hung in for a while against Texas Tech, were just a couple of golfers away from a win against Texas, and put up a fight against Oklahoma and West Virginia on Sunday.

Still, 1-4 is a bad showing for the team. Ricky Costello continued his surprising strong start, winning three times and tying the other three, never dropping a round to the opponent. Other than that, it was a plethora of average performances by the team, and certainly not their favorite way to wrap up match play for the calendar year.

Looking ahead, the team has about three months off before they travel to Arizona for the Arizona Intercollegiate on January 27th and 28th. They have a favorable six matchups before the competition get serious again, with the Big 12 Championships occurring in mid-April, with NCAA match play coming soon after. There’s still plenty of time for the team to find their swings and compete in those national competitions, and it will take the leadership of Kinney and Vincent in order for the team to get their confidence back and their heads in the right place.