Sept. 22, 2006

Champaign, Ill. - The Illinois men's golf team heads to Chicagoland this weekend to host the inaugural Olympia Fields Country Club/Fighting Illini Invitational on Sunday and Monday. The UI program has been looking forward to hosting its first tournament since the 2001 Big Ten Championships, and what better place than the famed Olympia Fields North Course. Rated the No. 36 course on Golf Digest's Top 100 golf courses nationally, Olympia Fields C.C. has hosted four majors, most recently the 2003 U.S. Open.

"We're excited that this event is finally here," Illini head coach Mike Small said. "This is a great opportunity to showcase Olympia Fields to some of the nation's top teams. It is also great exposure for our program to have our players competing on an excellent course against top-level competition."

The 12-team field consists of Arizona State, Duke, Georgia Tech, Minnesota, Northwestern, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Purdue, Stanford, Toledo and Vanderbilt in addition to the Illini. This is a loaded field featuring seven teams that advanced to last year's NCAA Championships, led by 2006 national champion Oklahoma State. Five of the teams finished the 2005-06 season ranked in the top 20 by Golfstat, with 10 of the 12 teams in the top 51.

The tournament is a 54-hole format with rounds one and two on Sunday and the final round on Monday. Tee times begin each day from Holes 1 and 10 at seven-minute intervals starting at 7:30 a.m. Illinois will be paired with Oklahoma State on Sunday for the first two rounds.

The Illini traveling lineup consists of seniors Patrick Nagle and Kyle Hosick, juniors Mark Ogren and Frank Alafoginis and sophomore Jon Krick. Ogren led Illinois at its first event of the fall, the Inverness Invitational, by tying for ninth place. This marks the first tournament of the season for Alafoginis as well as Nagle, who has been recovering from a hand injury.

"We're happy to have Patrick back in the lineup," Small said. "He is our most experienced player, and we were missing that experience in our first tournament a couple weeks ago. He's coming off a great summer where he qualified for the U.S. Open and won a major amateur event. We hope to see him carry over that success from the summer into the fall season for us."

Admission to the Olympia Fields Country Club/Fighting Illini Invitational is free and golf fans are encouraged to come out and watch some of the top teams and players in collegiate golf. There will also be live scoring of the event available on the internet at Golfstat.