The No. 12 Illinois men’s golf team began its ascent to a fourth consecutive Big Ten title after finishing the second round 12-under-par. Illinois coasted to the lead before clinching together the victory on Sunday. This marks Illinois’ ninth Big Ten Championship in the last 10 years.

The Illini toppled every other Big Ten team by a monstrous total score of 836. Ohio State took home second with 851, and Iowa came in third with 859.

Senior Nick Hardy grabbed his second individual title as an Illini, with a score of 204. He finished 6-under-par with a match-low score of 67 in the final round on Sunday.

Hardy and his fellow senior teammates haven’t seen a season at Illinois where the team didn’t win a Big Ten title. The last time the team did not win the title was in 2014 to Minnesota.

Bryan Baumgarten and Michael Feagles tied for fifth place with 212, while Dylan Meyer trailed them with 213 to tie for eighth.

After Friday’s first round, the Illini finished in the middle of the pack with a team score of 281. A cumulative second-round score of 268 pushed Illinois in front of runner-up Ohio State by 11 strokes overall. At the end of day two, Iowa and Penn State were tied for third place with 3-over-par.

During Sunday’s final round, Illinois shot a 287 as a team, finishing with a significant seven-stroke advantage over the second-lowest-scoring team on the day, Northwestern. 

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