Illinois fifth-year seniors Adrien Dumont de Chassart and Tommy Kuhl end without bringing home the program’s first-ever national championship.

By Matt Stevens - IlliniGuys Staff Writer

May 31, 2023

(Cover photos courtesy Matt Stevens/IlliniGuys)

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Adrien Dumont de Chassart and Tommy Kuhl may be the human representation of the emotional brutality aspect of the latest NCAA Championship misfortune for the University of Illinois men’s golf program.

In the world that the old-school ABC Sports commercial lead-in created, the thrill of victory is almost always subsequently followed by the agony of defeat.

Illinois will leave the NCAA Championships with a top eight finish but without the national championship trophy that Illinois head coach Mike Small has dedicated his life to bringing to his alma mater.

“A bunch of coaches commented to me this week about how we consistently do this for so long,” Small said. “I guess we should take a lot of pride in this because it doesn’t happen in almost any sport. It’s not guaranteed and only comes with a lot of hard work.”

Throughout the 2022-23 season, the Illini top two players competed under the spotlight of what the expectation is at the men’s golf program in Champaign-Urbana - a national championship. Since taking the job in June 2000, Small has guided Illini teams to a second, a semifinal appearance and now six quarterfinal appearances in a run that makes his program the most consistent winning men’s sport on the Illinois campus. But the son of Bill, a captain and All Big-Ten player on the 1963 Illinois men's basketball team that won the Big Ten Conference title, and native of Danville knows there is no such thing as trying anymore in his program. There’s one job to do and everybody around the program thought this team, with three seniors and two of the most talented underclassmen in the country, would stop knocking on the national championship door but finally blow the front door open.

Adrien Dumont de Chassart closes his illustrious college career as Illinois' only three-time Big Ten Golfer of the Year. (Photo courtesy Matt Stevens/IlliniGuys)

“One of these days, it’ll happen. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t,” Small said. “But it’s not over yet. We’re in the game a lot. These kids come to Illinois to be in the game. They don’t come to Illinois just to try. We’ve been in the game for a long time and that’s why I’m proud of them.”

Dumont de Chassart and Kuhl were the leaders of a team that had undoubtedly the program’s best regular season with seven team wins with each of the wins essentially turning into blowouts early in the week and glorified parade walks in the final round. Both players have the opportunity, the talent and the mental makeup to match and even surpass anything that any Illini alum has done in professional golf including head coach Mike Small’s college teammate Steve Stricker, current LIV player Thomas Pieters and current PGA Tour player Nick Hardy. However, all of those notes represent this duos past and future. The present was Tuesday’s 3-2 defeat to Florida State that represented the very last time either player will represent their alma mater and be coached by Small. For a team and a senior duo that had dreams of as their head coach said it Tuesday “being different”, the result was all too similar.

“If you make too big a deal about (winning a national title) it becomes harder,” Small said. “If you want something so bad, it gets harder and harder to do. If you want to make a putt so bad, you try less because the hole shrinks up on you. If you try so hard in these things, it shrinks up on you. I think the media, the climate and the attention, make a bigger deal of it and help shrink (the hole) for our guys and we need to be stronger than that and keep fighting that.”

On the practice green following the immediacy of knowing they’d been eliminated from the 2023 NCAA Men’s Golf Championships in the quarterfinal round, tears were seen, hugs were given and heads were shaking in almost disbelief that it was over.

Morton's Tommy Kuhl begins his professional career having been a leading force on a 2023 NCAA quarterfinalist and a member of five Big Ten championship teams. (Photo courtesy Matt Stevens/IlliniGuys)

“Those guys care. That’s all coaches ask, is that they care,” an emotional Small said with tears in eyes. “Don’t get me started on [the impact Dumont de Chassart and Kuhl made at Illinois]. I’ll probably have trouble finishing, They’re solid kids, great students, been to two Elite Eights, two match plays — which every coach in the country would give their you-know-what to be here. Those guys have come here twice and fought until the end. It’s tough because they work so hard.”

For Kuhl, who will play in the Palmer Cup before turning pro on the Canadian PGA Tour to hopefully earn his full Korn Ferry Tour card for the 2024 season, the dream was never to be a professional golfer. The Morton native grew up an Illini fan, just like his head coach, with his only goal being to play for arguably the most impressive golfer to come out of the state in several decades - Mike Small.

“This was my dream ever since I was a little kid,” Kuhl said. “I’m sorry for being so emotional right now but this is hard. I had this dream of representing this university, play for this coach and to have it all end so suddenly is hard. It’s just so hard.”

Once he arrived wasn’t being a star on the PGA Tour. It wasn’t winning a bunch of majors. Kuhl grew up wanting to play at Illinois, wanting Mike Small to be his head coach and once he got the opportunity to wear the orange and blue colors, Kuhl needed to set himself apart from everybody else who had played at Illinois.

“This place, this coach and these guys believed in me,” Kuhl said. “To get match play is a big deal. The thing we do in this program is play well for one another. Coach Small controls this culture here and I think he’s the best in the country at doing that. It’s the reason, along with everybody here being so talented, that we get this far each time.”

Dumont de Chassart also solidified a top-five finish in the PGA TOUR University rankings (No. 3) to earn a Korn Ferry Tour card this season and the ability to accept unlimited sponsor exemptions on the PGA TOUR. He’ll begin the chase of putting his name in the conversation of greatest Belgian golfers of all-time on a list that includes Nicolas Colsaerts, Thomas Pieters and Thomas Detry - the last two have in common that they were top players collegiately at Illinois for Small. Dumont de Chassart is already the first Illini player to be named a three-time Big Ten Conference Player of the Year selection. Dumont de Chassart and Kuhl lead Illinois to four straight Big Ten titles, two NCAA quarterfinal appearances and both will almost assuredly leave their college careers as All-America selections.

“I had a heck of a five years with Tommy and everybody else,”  Dumont de Chassart said. “We all care a lot about being great. That’s why we’re all sad right now. I can say that we have no regrets. That’s what matters. I think because Coach Small preaches that we play the best can and have the right mentality, good things are going to happen. It’s why he’s been to match play so many times.”

Now this duo, just like it was done by the elite team of Pieters, Detry and Charlie Danielson and then by the team of Nick Hardy and Dylan Meyer, will hand the program over to a host of younger players likely led by the national breakout performance of Jackson Buchanan.

“I told everybody (Monday) that I think this is just the start of what you’re going to see from (Buchanan) and I think Piercen is the most talented kid on this team,” Kuhl said. “I probably have more belief in them than they do in themselves at times. But that will come with leadership experience and with myself, Adrien and Matthis [Besard] gone next year, that time is coming. They’ll step up and they have bright futures.”