CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The Fighting Illini men's golf program announced Thursday that an exhibition match play event against Florida State has been added to the team's spring schedule.
Illinois, which closed the fall portion of the season ranked 12th nationally in the NCAA Division I team, will face the No. 31 Seminoles on Saturday, Feb. 1. The match will be contested at the Watersound Club's Camp Creek Golf Course in Inlet Beach, Florida, approximately 120 miles west of the FSU campus on the Florida panhandle.
The head-to-head contest will serve as a final tune-up as both teams prepare for the second half of the 2024-25 season, and what each hopes is another deep postseason run. Both Illinois and Florida State have advanced to match play at the NCAA Championship in three of the last four season. Illinois owns the most NCAA match play appearances with nine since the current format was adopted in 2008-09.
Following the matchup with FSU, the Illini will then face six regular-season stroke play events leading up to the 2025 Big Ten Championship in late April. The Illini and Seminoles are both slated to host NCAA Regionals at their home courses, May 12-14, and the NCAA Championship is set for May 23-28 at Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California.
2025 SPRING SCHEDULE
FEBRUARY
The spring slate opens in earnest, Feb. 13-15, at the John A. Burns Intercollegiate hosted by Hawai'i at The Ocean Course at Hokuala in Lihue, Kaua'i, Hawai'i. It marks the Illini's first trip to the islands since 2020 when the team posted a fourth-place finish in the same event.
MARCH
March features a stretch of three tournaments beginning with the Illinois' fourth straight season in the field at the Southern Highlands Collegiate, March 2-4, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event, hosted by UNLV, annually draws a strong field of championship-caliber programs to test themselves on a challenging desert track. The Illini won the event in 2023.
The Orange and Blue close out the month at a pair of events new to the team's schedule. First Illinois heads to California to compete, March 17-18, at Loyola Marymount's Pauma Valley Invitational at Pauma Valley Country Club. Two weeks later, the Illini close the month, March 31-April 1, in Cordova, Tennessee, for the Memphis Intercollegiate at Colonial Country Club.
APRIL
April continues with the Illini returning to Augusta, Georgia, for the Augusta Haskins Award Invitational. The event is hosted by Augusta University at Forest Hills Golf Club – just miles from Augusta National Golf Club – and takes place April 5-6, concluding on the eve of Masters week.
Following play in Augusta, the Orange and Blue close out the regular season at Purdue's Boilermaker Invitational, April 19-20, at the Ackerman-Allen Golf Course in West Lafayette, Indiana.
POSTSEASON
The Fighting Illini's 2025 postseason run begins April 25-27 at the Big Ten Championship at Baltimore Country Club in Baltimore, Maryland. Illinois is in search of its 14th Big Ten title since 2009.
NCAA Regionals are slated for May 12-14. Illinois was selected in October to host for the first time in program history at Atkins Golf Club at the University of Illinois in Urbana. Other host sites are: Auburn University Club (Auburn, Alabama), Gold Mountain Golf Club (Bremerton, Washington), Montreux Golf and Country Club (Reno, Nevada), Poplar Grove Golf Course (Amherst, Virginia), and Seminole Legacy Golf Club (Tallahassee, Florida).
The NCAA National Championship is set to return for Year 2 at the North Course at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California, May 23-28. Illinois will enter the 2025 postseason in search of the program's 16th NCAA Championship berth in 17 years dating back to 2008. After winning the NCAA Stanford Regional title last spring, the Illini finished first through 72 holes of stroke play at La Costa before posting the team's ninth top-five national finish since 2011 as one of the final eight program's vying for the national title in the match play portion of NCAA Championship.
Tournament dates and times are subject to change. Stay tuned to FightingIllini.com for the latest on Illinois men's golf.
