The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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"It's obviously just more about consistency in college golf. … Every- one's just really good all the time." It turns out that Mueller was really good all the time, too. The freshman was named to the All-Big Ten second team and received U-M's Bert Kat- zenmeyer Award for lowest scoring average (72.86) after starting all 12 events in his debut. Men's golf coach Chris Whitten knew Mueller was talented, but even he couldn't have predicted just how successful the youngster would be during his first season. Rookies just don't perform like that very often. "The biggest thing that stands out about Kyle is just the balance he maintains," Whitten said. "We knew his game was getting better, and we saw that through the recruit- ing process and during the summer before college golf, but then he got here and just handled everything so well: from school, to his schedule, workouts, tournament play — just everything. He was level and consis- tent the whole year, which was great for a freshman." Mueller may have exceeded ex- pectations as a rookie, but Whitten wasn't surprised at the success. "I guess there are a couple of things to look at and probably every coach has his own system, which is slightly different," Whitten explained. "You probably start with scores and what types of tournaments they've played. Have they seen the best players in the country and have they competed well against them? Kyle had done those things. "Then there are the in-person evaluations. You want to see what a person's athletic skill-set is like. We thought that Kyle's technique could get a little bit better — which it con- tinually is — but he had all the shots, and he fights really hard. It doesn't matter what he's at score-wise on the day, he's going to fight on every single shot." With so much success so early on the college level, one begins to won- der what Mueller hopes to achieve after such a productive freshman season. He is pleased with what he's been able to do so far but isn't close to being content. "I'm definitely very happy with how my freshman year went, but looking back on it, there were a lot of areas I could've improved," Muller explained. "That's always going to be the case with golf, but I felt like I improved so much this off-season already. I've been working on my swing and neatening things up, and I look back like 'Wow, if I had the consistency during first semester that I did during second semester, what could that have been like?' "The other part of it is that I still have three more years to see how good I can get. That makes me really look forward to the rest of the sum- mer and next year, and seeing where I can go with my game." Part of taking his game to the next level is being a leader on and off the course, despite his youth. Golf is an individual and team sport. Mueller plans to leave a huge mark in both areas in year two. "You just go into every tournament trying to win it," he said. "That's the