Chesterton’s Jake Bobin fires a 78 on second and final day of state tournament at Prairie View Golf Club to finish in middle of the pack of 110 of Indiana's top high school golfers

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

His reads looked on target, the putter went back and accelerated through the ball smoothly and time after time, the birdie putt rolled toward the hole, creating an instant of suspense, only to curl on a lip or roll over an edge, necessitating a tap-in par.
Every golfer has suffered that affliction, it’s just that most don’t have the game to compensate in enough other areas to break 80 at an extremely challenging golf course.
Despite so many cups spitting back putts, Bobin managed to shoot a 78 at Prairie View Golf Club in Carmel on Wednesday in the second and last round of the state finals golf tournament.
His 39-39 round gave him a two-day total of 158, 14-over par, good for a tie for 56th in a field of 110 of the state’s best high school golfers.
Bobin’s score was the lowest and his place the highest from a Chesterton golfer since Bo Smith tied for 26th and shot a 153 in 2023 as a junior. (Smith holds the Elmhurst University school record for 36 holes, 139).
Grading himself, Bobin said, “I could have played so much better. Putting was a struggle. I hit so many lips. I don’t know how many putts I missed.”
Fairways off the tee, on the other hand, Bobin didn’t miss many of those.
“Definitely iron play could have been better for sure,” he said. “My driver was pretty hot all weekend. I hit 12 out of the 14 fairways yesterday, and I think I hit 10 today.”
Bobin earned his way into the state tournament by shooting a 74 at Sandy Pines last Thursday in the Lake Central regional. He revealed after his second round at state that he was in so much pain at the regional that he contemplated withdrawing on the first hole.
“I was really close to not playing. It hurt that entire round. We went to the ER and they said it was a strained muscle,” Bobin said. “Then I went to Mr. (Bernie) Stento, the trainer, and he worked it out for me. We played a practice round here on Monday and it wasn’t hurting at all, and yesterday and today it just got me.”
The pain didn’t prevent him from hitting many great shots, not all from the tee box. His best came from a fairway bunker on No. 16. His golf ball resting on sand 170 yards from the hole, Bobin pulled a 7-iron out of his bag and left himself a 2-foot putt that he made for his only birdie on card that showed 10 pars and seven bogeys.
“I’m not a fan of fairway bunkers, but I pushed through it and hit a good shot,” Bobin said.
He called the two days a great experience.
“The course is really hard, but I mean, I played the best I could have, minus the lip-outs,” he said. “A lot of the greens are very undulated. The bunkers are very deep, heather against you, it’s just tough all around. It’s fair, it’s just long. It’s longer than we played all season, but I wasn’t surprised by that.”
Chesterton coach Marc Bruner played Monday’s practice round with Bobin and likes his chances of making a return trip to state.
“This is a great experience because he’s going to do everything he can to get back out here again next year, and if he does, the experience of not just the course, which is obviously important, but the preparation, how to handle the practice round, being down here for three days, there is a lot of the mental prep that goes into it that he’ll be accustomed to if he makes it back,” Bruner said.
Some players take copious notes during the practice round, which can lead to information overload.
“I just take a lot of mental notes,” Bobin said. “I think if I write too much down and think about too much it goes sideways.”
The way the foursomes for the final round fell, Bobin played with a familiar face, Valparaiso senior Colin Kaleth for what Bobin estimated was about the seventh time this year. Groups from Chesterton and Valpo following the golfers tracked how they did against each other, but the golfers kept their focus trained on their true opponent, and a tough one at that: Prairie View, a 7,000-plus-yard Robert Trent Jr. design dotted with trouble that comes in the form of well-placed bunkers and bodies of water.
For the record, both golfers shot 78 and for the tournament Kaleth finished one stroke ahead of Bobin, tied for 49th. Bobin made up two strokes on Kaleth on the back nine Wednesday, keeping alive his streak of not losing to him this season when they played together.
“It was pretty cool I got to play with him for the last round of his high school career,” Bobin said.
The timing of Wednesday’s rain worked out well for those following that group because the rain that hit hard shortly afterward started lightly when the golfers were on their 18th hole.
The leaders were not as fortunate and had to deal with wet greens for part of the round, which didn’t cool down the day’s hottest golfer, Guerin Catholic senior Eli Wessel. The only golfer to break 70 on Wednesday with a 69, Wessel went 3-under on the back nine, coming from four strokes back at the turn to force a playoff with first-round tri-leader Hudson Kutchma of Westfield, who shot a 74 Wednesday. Kutchma won the two-hole playoff, enabling him to celebrate both individual and team championships. Westfield finished 16-over, followed by Center Grove (+17), Guerin Catholic (+20) and Castle (+24).