CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Fighting Illini junior men's golfer Max Herendeen was selected Friday as a Preseason First Team All-American by Golf Channel as one of the top 10 competitors in the nation entering the 2025-26 season. As a team, the Illini were also tabbed as the No. 11 squad in the Golf Channel preseason ranking.
Herendeen, who was also named this week to the Haskins Award Preseason Watch List and earned a Preseason Second Team All-America nod from Golfweek, is a two-time PING All-American, earning second team honors in 2024 and honorable mention in 2025. He became the first Illini golfer since Charlie Danielson to collect back-to-back All-America nods from the GCAA in his freshman and sophomore seasons. The Bellevue, Wash., product advanced to the final round of stroke play at the 2025 NCAA Championship and closed the year with a team-best average of 70.85 and the team's top head-to-head record at 1023-179-28 (.843). Herendeen tied for the team lead with 14 rounds in the 60s and boasted two of the team's three lowest individual rounds of the year with a 63 (-7) in the final round to place fifth at the John A. Burns Intercollegiate before matching that score to tie the opening-round record at the B1G Championship. His best finish of the season came at the Augusta Haskins Award Invitational where he tied for the lead with a 204 (-12) before finishing second in a playoff for medalist honors.
Herendeen enters his junior season riding the momentum of a sensational summer that included his PGA TOUR debut at the 3M Open and was capped by Round of 16 appearances in match play at both the 123rd Western Amateur and the 125th U.S. Amateur. He has ascended to a career-best mark of No. 17 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings.
The Illini are set to open the 2025-26 schedule in just more than three weeks, playing host to one of the nation's premier collegiate events at the 19th annual OFCC/Fighting Illini Invitational, Sept. 19-21, at famed Olympia Fields Country Club.
