UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State men's golf team begins the spring portion of its schedule with Big Ten Match Play Friday-Saturday, Feb. 7-8, at Hammock Beach Resort in Palm Coast, Florida. The Nittany Lions join 12 other teams on Jack Nicklaus' Ocean Course for the competition featuring a single-elimination bracket. No. 7 Penn State faces No. 10 Indiana in the opening round with an 8 a.m. ET shotgun start on Friday.
"We hope to have a good travel day into Palm Coast, and that in itself would get us off on the right foot," said Penn State men's golf coach Greg Nye. "Our guys are really looking forward to the Match Play and we had a chance to go to compete in an intrasquad match play a couple of weeks ago in Orlando during the long Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. I think we are in a good place given it is early February."
Each team match consists of six individual matches. Seniors Alec Bard (New Hartford, N.Y.) and Ryan Davis (Berkeley Heights, N.J.), juniors Lukas Clark (Holland, Pa.), James McHugh (Rye, N.Y.), Lou Olsakovsky (Upper St. Clair, Pa.), and freshman Jimmy Meyers (Wexford, Pa.) will represent Penn State this weekend.
The winning teams from Friday morning's sessions advance to the quarterfinals Friday at 1:30 p.m. ET.
Seeds for the competition were determined using the Nov. 26, 2019, final fall Golfstat rankings. Three teams, No. 1 Northwestern, No. 2 Purdue and No. 3 Minnesota all received first-round byes. The Boilermakers will face the winner of the Indiana/Penn State match.
This is the sixth year for Big Ten Match Play at the Hammock Beach Resort, but the first with the competition played entirely on the par-72, 7,201-yard Ocean Course.
Saturday morning's session tees off at 8 a.m. ET with the championship semifinals and consolation semifinals. The afternoon session concludes with the championship, third, fifth- and seventh-place matches.
Live scoring for Big Ten Match Play is available on GolfStat. A recap of Friday's competition and results will be available on GoPSUsports.com.
Keep up to date with the latest information about the Nittany Lion Men's Golf team on Twitter at @PennStateMGolf and Facebook. Follow Coach Greg Nye on Instagram at @CoachNyePSU.
