CHAMPAIGN — Mike Small loves forcing competition on his team, and the longtime Illinois men’s golf coach feels the 2025-26 team will feature plenty of competition to crack the rotation.

While his top three golfers are clear — All-American Max Herendeen, top transfer Dane Huddleston and senior All-Big Ten performer Ryan Voois — Small saw intense competition for his final two rotation spots during intense team qualifying competition leading into this weekend’s OFCC/Fighting Illini Invitational at Olympia Fields (Ill.) Country Club, the Illini’s first event of the fall season.

“We got six or seven or eight guys, I think, that can play major college Division-I golf,” Small said on Monday. “Now, to what level come April and May, I don’t know yet. It’s going to tell us a lot this year how they play in certain situations and how they handle their growth and their ascent. So this fall schedule is perfect for us because the golf courses are all good.”

Illinois enters the season ranked No. 11 in the preseason coaches poll, one of just two Big Ten teams ranked along with No. 24 UCLA, the reigning Big Ten champion. Small returns most of a roster that finished second in the Big Ten last season, won its NCAA Regional and made NCAA Championships for the 16th time in 17 years. But Illinois lost All-American Jackson Buchanan, and the team is hungry after failing to win the Big Ten for a second straight season and after missing the cut after three rounds of stroke play at the NCAA Championships.

Small got aggressive this offseason in the portal. Huddleston, the 2025 WAC Golfer of the Year last year at Utah Valley, and Little Rock transfer Freddie Turnell were two of the top-seven players available in the transfer portal based on the NCAA individual stroke rankings last season. Herendeen and Voois are one of the strongest returning duos in the Big Ten, and last year’s talented group of underclassmen enters the season more battle-tested at the college level.

Small said he will enter this weekend’s host event — which includes No. 1 Oklahoma State, No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Florida, No. 6 Arizona State. No. 9 Florida State, No. 13 Georgia Tech and No. 15 Texas Tech — with Huddleston leading the rotation after he beat Herendeen by one stroke in qualifying. Voois will be No. 3 in the rotation, while sophomore Trey Marrion and junior Ethan Wilson edged out Jake Birdwell for the final two spots in the rotation.

Those players earned those spots through intense qualifying competition. But Small cautioned that competition will continue through the fall and potentially into the spring. That’s the way he likes it, and that’s what he thinks the team will need to reach its full potential in April and May.

“I think our lineup will change a lot this year. I think it’ll move. It’ll come in and out of the schedule,” Small said. “As coaches, you want to find out who plays the best under certain situations, certain golf courses. But in golf, the last box in the scorecard tells a lot. So we’re going to continue to use that as a barometer, but we’re going to change the lineups. I would think our team is deep.

“It’s important to get off to a good start. But in the fall, you want to kind of find out what you have, put your guys in some uncomfortable situations and put ’em in events against teams that are really, really good and maybe some teams that maybe you should beat and kind of create all different kinds of scenarios for your guys to get better. So that’s what we’re going to try to accomplish in the next four to five weeks.”

Key returnersMax Herendeen, junior: The Illini’s big bopper, Herendeen returns for his junior season as one of the top golfers in the country. He was a unanimous First Team All-Big Ten selection as a sophomore and earned All-America honorable mention after leading the Illini with a stroke average of 70.84. Herendeen is both consistent — he was one of the Illini’s top three finishers in all 14 team stroke-play events — and can go low and threaten to win tournaments.Ryan Voois, senior: The California native was the Illini’s steadiest golfer outside of the top two last season and earned First Team All-Big Ten honors after recording top-25 finishes in 11 of 14 tournaments, including four top-10 finishes. Voois has one career win and finished second in the NCAA Regional last season. He begins the season at No. 29 in the PGA TOUR University rankings.Jake Birdwell and Trey Marrion, sophomores: Both were named to the five-man Big Ten All-Freshman Team last season. As expected, there wasn’t much consistency from the freshmen as they were in and out of the lineup along with Ethan Wilson. But there were definitely signs of promise. Marrion ranked fourth on the team with a stroke average of 73.12 and was the No. 3 finisher for Illinois in seven of 14 tournaments, including two top-10 finishes, though he struggled in the postseason. Birdwell ranked sixth on the team in stroke average (73.43), but he ended the season with momentum, winning the Boilermaker Invitational and finishing third at the Big Ten Championship.Key departuresJackson Buchanan: The Georgia native is the lone loss from last season’s team, but he was a big one. The 2024 Big Ten Golfer of the Year earned All-Big Ten First Team honors twice and earned at least All-American honorable mention each of the last three seasons (Third Team in 2024). Buchanan was a bit more inconsistent last season as he was playing under the pressure of chasing the PGA TOUR University rankings, and ultimately, he came up two spots short of a Korn Ferry Tour card following an 86th-place finish in NCAA stroke play. Still, Buchanan had nine top-10 finishes last season, including top-5 finishes in the Big Ten Championship and NCAA Urbana Regional.Key additionsDane Huddleston, junior: The 2025 WAC Golfer of the Year was the No. 1 transfer in the country this past offseason. He won five tournaments last season at Utah Valley and finished the year ranked No. 52 in the NCAA individual rankings. Huddleston chose Illinois over top-25 programs Texas Tech and Oklahoma and is projected to be one of the Illini’s top two golfers.Freddie Turnell: The England native was the No. 7 transfer in the country this offseason after finishing his freshman season at Little Rock at No. 199 in the NCAA individual rankings. He won OVC Freshman of the Year after posting a scoring average of 71.91 and won The Goodwin at Stanford over many high-major players. He’ll battle for a rotation spot.Dujua Snyman: Originally from South Africa but most recently out of Australia, Snyman is the lone freshman addition to the Illini roster this season. He was one of the top prospects in Australia and won several events in 2022 and 2023, earning the 2022 Gold Coast District Golf Association Junior Player of the Year.Three keys to the season

1. Get transfers to push the returners: Illinois was a very good team last season. Obviously, it takes a very good team to win an NCAA Regional. But the Illini fell short in two of the biggest competitions of the year, collapsing under pressure in the final round of both the Big Ten Championships — blowing an eight-stroke lead entering the final round to fall by one stroke to UCLA — and the NCAA Championships, falling from ninth to 18th in the third round to miss the cut. This returning group is very good but could use a push to up its game and mental fortitude in the highest-pressure rounds. That’s part of why Small added two of the best transfers available this offseason in Utah Valley’s Dane Huddleston and Little Rock’s Freddie Turnell.

Huddleston gives Small a proven tournament winner — he won five tournaments last season, including the WAC Championship — who can push Herendeen for the top spot in the rotation and pair with Herendeen as one of the country’s best duos. Turnell didn’t win a rotation spot to start the season, but he can push Marrion, Birdwell and Wilson to stay on their games if they want to stay in the rotation.

“I love ’em. I think they’re great. They’re great kids. They fit perfectly into our program,” Small said of Huddleston and Turnell. “They both come with obviously some success in college golf. They both won events. Dane won a bunch last year and Freddie won a big-time Division-I event as a freshman. So we know they bring a record with them, but their personalities, their desire to get better, their appreciation for what we have here has been awesome. And I think the future bodes well for both of ’em.  …I think the end result for these two players can be very positive.”

2. Max out Max: Herendeen is one of the most talented golfers Small has ever brought into his program, and that has shown through during his first two years in the program as he has earned All-America and All-Big Ten First Team honors in both of his first two seasons and finished tied for second in stroke play at the 2024 NCAA Championship. But after pretty similar results between his freshman (70.87 stroke average) and sophomore (70.84) seasons, Small is looking for Herendeen to take his game to another level.

Herendeen stayed at Illinois this summer to work on his game rather than return home to Washington state as he did the previous year. This summer, he finished ninth at the Western Amateur, placed ninth in the U.S. Amateur, represented Team USA in the Arnold Palmer Cup and played in his first PGA TOUR event, missing the cut in the 3M Open.

Herendeen enters the season ranked No. 19 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings and is a preseason All-American. If he elevates his game further, he could establish himself as one of the true top-tier college golfers and help Illinois get more trophies next spring.

“He’s getting better. He is improving,” Small said. “He’s just growing up, and he’s learning how to deal with things that he never had to deal with before: expectations. He’s addressing parts of his game that need help. I think this is going to be a big year for him. You add guys like Dane this week, it’s good for him to have another Jackson Buchanan here to compete against and to push himself. But Max, he’ll be a preseason All-American. He’s on all the watch lists for all the awards. This is something he has to deal with and grow. But I’m excited about him and his future. But again, it ebbs and flows. It’s not a perfect curve, a perfect straight line. It’s going to go up and down, and it’s something that he’s going to handle. I’m excited about this year with him. I really am.”

3. Find consistency from back of rotation: The Illini’s top three haven’t been perfect the last two years, but Herendeen, Buchanan and Voois have been good enough to compete with the best teams in the country, leading Illinois to winning NCAA stroke play in 2024 and winning an NCAA Regional in 2025. But Small has struggled to find a No. 4 and a No. 5 he can rely on during the last two years. To complement a strong top three, Small’s top job this season will be developing and settling on two of the other six golfers who give the Illini the best chance to reclaim a Big Ten title and enter the NCAA postseason with momentum.

Marrion, Birdwell and Wilson all have experience but must show more consistency. Small said Marrion and Birdwell had the most birdies of any Illini golfer during qualifying competition, but unlike Herendeen and Huddleston, they also had a lot of bogies. Small is pushing for those returners to mature and find steadier play. Turnell, Snyman and sophomore Joseph Buttress also will have the chance to push for a chance in the rotation through individual competition and practice.

“I think consistency in everything you do as a person, not only as a player, is huge. Everything you do becomes a habit. I believe that everything you do, if you do it once, twice, three times, it starts becoming a habit,” Small said. “The potential is there. …Their ability to really explode is there, but controlling their emotions and their course management and ability to limit mistakes is not quite there yet. Now, that’s youth. They are sophomores, but this year is the year they’re going to have to understand that and grow, so that by juniors and seniors, they’ll have that figured out.”

Illini men’s golf 2025-26 schedule