SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — The Wittenberg University men's golf team will host an outstanding 15-team field for the Wittenberg Invitational on Sept. 17 and 18 at two courses in Springfield. A week later the team will entertain six more quality foes for the first-ever Tiger Invitational on Sept. 23 and 24 at Reid Park North Golf Course.

The teams will tee it up for the Wittenberg Invitational on Saturday at 12:10 p.m. at Windy Knoll Golf Course and Sunday at noon at Reid Park North Golf Course. The Tiger Invitational opens on Saturday, Sept. 23, at 10 a.m. and continues on Sunday, Sept. 24, with tee times at noon.

The Tigers are welcoming plenty of stiff competition for the Wittenberg Invitational. Otterbein, Ohio Wesleyan, Allegheny, Denison, John Carroll, Wilmington, Ohio Northern, Hiram, Wooster, Baldwin-Wallace, Centre, Wabash, Capital and Kenyon will join the Tigers in the field. Ohio Wesleyan, Wittenberg and Otterbein will also field a second full varsity team in the competition, while Wabash, Ohio Northern and Wittenberg will enter individual players who will not have their scores count toward the team scores.

The Tiger Invitational has a much more local flavor, as the Tigers step out of their traditional NCAA Division III competition circles to take on NAIA scholarship programs from Cedarville, Seton Hill, Urbana and Ohio Dominican and junior college powerhouse Columbus State. Those five schools are joined by two teams from Wittenberg and one from Wilmington.

The Tigers are coming off a solid 2004-05 season in which, as a team, they placed ahead of nearly 60 percent of the schools they faced in tournament competition. Led by senior Kris Schmelzer, a 2004 second-team All-North Coast Athletic Conference honoree, the Tigers return two of their top five players and welcome a strong recruiting class in hopes of improving on last year's fourth-place finish in the conference championship tournament.

Windy Knoll, formerly a world-renowned horse farm, is a links-style course that opened in 2002. The par-71, 18-hole course plays 6,800 yards from the professional tees. It is owned by Dan d'Arrigo, Wittenberg class of 1978.

Reid Park North is a municipal golf course operated by the City of Springfield's National Trail Parks and Recreation Department. The par-72, 18-hole course plays 6,838 yards from the professional tees.

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