Great Lakes Wire

The Northern Michigan University men's golf team is set to compete in the Motor City Shakedown at TPC Michigan in Dearborn, Michigan. The tournament, hosted by Wayne State University, will take place over two days from Monday, September 29 to Tuesday, September 30.

Participating teams include Purdue Northwest, Roosevelt, Davenport, and host Wayne State. These teams are all members of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) and have been nationally and regionally ranked based on last year's final standings.

TPC Michigan is a course designed by Jack Nicklaus. It features an 18-hole championship layout that winds through wetlands and rolling hills. The course has previously hosted the Ford Senior Players Championship for 16 years.

Weather forecasts predict sunny skies with temperatures in the low 80s and light winds during the tournament.

In their previous outing at the Bulldog Fall Classic, NMU finished 17th out of 19 teams with a combined score of +92. The team showed improvement each round with scores of +35, +29, and +28. Arthur Ylitalo led NMU with a total score of +14 to tie for 41st out of 106 golfers. Jacob Daavettila followed with a score of +24 to tie for 79th place. Tyler Annala completed his rounds at +26 and was second on the team in par four scoring, par five scoring, and total pars. Harvey Ylitalo finished with a three-round total of +30 as an individual competitor.

At last year's Motor City Shakedown, NMU placed sixth out of nine teams. Arthur Ylitalo finished seventh overall with a two-round total of 143 (-1), marking his best career performance over 18 holes and tying for sixth in NMU's record book for individual 36-hole scores.

Purdue Northwest began its season finishing 15th at the Bulldog Fall Classic; Brody Pass and Maxwell Abel tied for 62nd place individually. Wayne State started their season tying for third at the Folds of Honor Challenge in Allendale; Andrew Daily tied for fourth individually while Josh Lahner and Troy Chapman also secured top-25 finishes. Davenport opened its campaign placing fifth at the Bulldog Fall Classic; Justin Grimmard led the Panthers finishing sixth overall while Chen-Shiuan (Louis) Wu took twelfth place. Roosevelt ended up nineteenth at the same event; Pierre Heylen finished fifty-eighth while Ben Jones placed eighty-fifth individually.

Fans can follow live scoring online as well as updates via NMU's social media channels on Instagram (Nmu_Wildcat_Golf), X (NMU_WildcatGolf), and Facebook (Northern Michigan University Wildcats).