Hey Illini Fans,

12 days.

10 rounds.

8 Illini.

6 courses.

2 states.

1 unforgettable spring break trip!

Our travel team arrived home from a whirlwind of a spring break trip. The first half of our trip was spent in South Carolina, where we finished in third place at the Briar's Creek Invitational. Check out Bing's Chip Shots article to hear more about the time we spent practicing and playing at some of the amazing courses on and around Kiawah Island.

Our time in South Carolina came to a close on Thursday morning, as we headed to Turtle Point Golf Course to practice for a few hours before driving to Georgia. The five-hour road trip to Atlanta flew by, as we had some time to talk about everything from funny family stories to dream travel destinations. Oh, and I have to say, Coach and Jenny deserve a gold star for dealing with 12 days of our singing; it's not an easy task I can assure you of that. We arrived in Atlanta Thursday evening for the second half of our spring break trip.

On Friday, our team had the opportunity to practice and play at Atlanta National Golf Club. The course was unlike anything I had ever seen. A Pete Dye design, it combined unique and undulating green complexes with some tricky blind shots that tested both our course management and physical skill. Following the round, we had time to fine-tune some areas of our game at the practice facility in preparation for our next tournament, which would begin on Sunday. A special thanks to Dean Alexander for being such a great host to our team; it was a phenomenal experience and we truly appreciate all that you did to make it so.  

Saturday provided the perfect opportunity for an off day after being on the road for just over a week already. The morning was spent catching up on rest and homework from the week. In the afternoon we had some down time, and Coach and Jenny took us to the movies to see Beauty and the Beast. It was certainly worth the hype; we couldn't stop talking about it the rest of the day.

Sunday was our practice round, so we took time to chart out the course and get comfortable on the greens. Though we played in this event last year, the course was playing a bit shorter this year as we were playing some new tee boxes on some of the par 4's and par 3's.

The weather had shown a chance of storms on both Monday and Tuesday so we were preparing to play through some rainy conditions. Fortunately, most of the rain missed us entirely and the weather turned out to be great during all three rounds. On Monday we were set to play 36 holes. The team finished the day at 13-over par and in sixth place heading into the final round. It was a strong field, so we put ourselves in position to move up the leaderboard on day 2 with some solid scoring. Tristyn and I both held spots inside the top-20 as the day came to a close.

The course received over an inch of rain overnight into Tuesday, so the conditions changed quite a bit as the fairways and greens softened up.  We adjusted to the conditions, and were able to move up two spots on the leaderboard and finish fourth place in the field, with Tristyn taking a solid top-10 finish as well.

I wanted to give a big shout-out to some of the special fans that came out to watch us over spring break. Coach's husband, Rick, was kind enough to fly out to watch the team for the first half of our spring break trip in South Carolina. He brought along Jackson and Landon (their grandsons), two of the best little Illini fans around, to cheer on the team through practice and play. We were also grateful to have some family members there to cheer us on as well; thank you to Tristyn's parents, and my parents too for making the trip! It's always a great experience to practice and compete as an Illini, but to do so in front of family and friends makes the experience that much more special and memorable.

The team will spend the next few days preparing for our final regular season event, hosted at Ohio State's Scarlet Course. It will serve as a great precursor to the Big Ten Championships, which will take place just a few days later in Maineville, Ohio (just outside of Cincinnati).

As always, keep it in the short grass,

Dana Gattone