Just this past week, Junior Tadgh Burke finished second in the 2022 Illinois State Golf Tournament, helping lead Lake Forest to a 4th place finish overall. 

Despite this accomplishment, golf was not always Burke’s main sport. 

Growing up, Burke focused a lot of his time on playing baseball and basketball, even competing for travel teams during the summer. Burke’s older brother, Scott, introduced him to golf when was eight, and he didn’t start playing golf competitively until he was 12 years old, which is later than most state contenders. 

Even in those several tournaments he played in middle school, Burke was in the middle of the pack. After that summer, Burke stopped golfing to continue to play travel baseball. It wasn’t until the beginning of his freshman year that he picked golf back up, playing for the JV team. Burke didn’t play varsity golf until sophomore year, where he participated in the 2021 State Tournament but did not place.

Between last year’s season and this year’s season, Burke made remarkable improvements in his game. During the offseason, he got a golf net in his backyard and would practice on it every day. “I would hit balls into it for hours on end,” Burke said.

Coming into the season, Burke had high expectations, knowing he could finish  high if he shot consistently. Although he didn’t play as strong as he would’ve liked in his first few matches of the year, he never bowed his head. 

“I struggled a bit at the beginning of the season, but I kept my head up and kept working. I knew if I just stuck to my game, it would all work out,” Burke said. 

Burke’s perseverance throughout the season was noted by his teammates. 

“Tadgh is one of the hardest workers that I’ve ever seen play golf. He is at the course all day and even stays after practice for another couple of hours. To see all his hard work pay off was awesome. I’m super proud of him,” teammate Asa Thomas said. 

Burke’s relentless grind throughout the season started to show when he placed first at the Regional Tournament, shooting a two-under-par round of 70 and leading the team to the State Tournament. 

  During the State tournament, however, the conditions were less than ideal, mainly due to the gusting winds. 

“The course was not playing easy, so just staying in it mentally was pretty tough,” Burke said.

Particularly, the tee shot on hole 17 was a difficult par 3 with water left, where most players rarely ended up making par. Burke, on the other hand, ended up making par on hole 17 during both rounds of the tournament.

Burke shot an opening round of 73, and coming into the second and final day, he was in 8th place overall, and the team was tied for 2nd place.

The end of the second day was when Burke started to make a move on the leaderboard, where he finished with another round of 73.

“The course conditions were worse the second day, so to shoot 73 again shot me up the leaderboard,” Burke said.

However, Burke said he did not pay attention to the leaderboard during the final round. 

“I honestly didn’t check the leaderboard that much. I just focused on getting better throughout the round,” Burke said. “I kept a clean scorecard, and kept grinding out pars.”

Throughout the two-day tournament, Burke didn’t shoot worse than one over par on any of the holes. After the second round, Burke was tied for first place in the state. This resulted in an intense playoff hole, that Burke eventually lost. The final few holes were nerve-wracking for Burke. 

“Knowing you have a chance to win it all is an awesome feeling, but you don’t want to mess it up,” Burke said. “You think a lot about every shot, but in the end, you just got to trust it.”

After his second-place finish, Burke was congratulated by not only his current teammates and friends, but he also had former teammates from past seasons at LFHS text him about his successful performance. 

Above all though, Tadgh’s favorite part of the season was not placing 2nd overall in the state, but rather being able to spend time with his teammates on and off the course.

“Getting close with all the guys was awesome. I never really was all that good of friends with some of the guys on the team, but now they are some of my best friends,” Burke said.