Purdue football golf event The Battle at Birck becomes future must-see

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ill. – Can we do this again?

Like maybe next week. Or least next summer.

Fist bumps, high-fives, chants of ‘Go Tiger’ – even though there was no one actually named Tiger around – and music blaring from a moving golf cart between holes. Add footballs being thrown into a chipping net with Earth, Wind and Fire playing in the background and you could tell this was different.

This wasn’t your typical Friday evening at the Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex.

This was fun, a different twist on a late summer night heading into the weekend, bringing Purdue’s football and men’s golf programs together for a friendly competition. It wasn’t a new idea but one unique to the Boilermakers. It worked.

And there were fans. Plenty of them showed up at the first tee on the Kampen Course to watch “The Battle at Birck,” and follow quarterbacks Aidan O’Connell and Austin Burton along with men’s golfers Nick Dentino and Luke Prall around the front nine.

Music played as Nate Barrett introduced the players, giving the event a big-time feel, and Dan Ross, the head pro, updated the scoreboard – a dry eraser board tied to the back of a cart.

“I can’t even describe all the nerves with all these people out here,” Burton said.

It’s funny because O’Connell and Burton are prepared to play in front of 60,000 fans at Ross-Ade Stadium but get nervous when more eyeballs are fixated on their golf games. They’re used to moving around Kampen or Ackerman-Allen with no one paying attention.

“We didn’t know how many people would show up,” O’Connell said. “We didn’t know if it would be 10 or 50 but it was a lot more to make me nervous. It was nerve-wracking but this guy was calm, cool and collected and hopefully, I can bring this to football.”

This guy was Prall, a junior on the golf team, and O’Connell’s partner. They defeated the duo of Burton and Dentino 1-up in an alternate shot format. O’Connell sealed the win with a short par putt on No. 9 after Prall nestled his birdie attempt near the hole from the front of the green.

It was also a different experience for the two members of coach Rob Bradley’s program. Bradley asked both to participate and Prall and Dentino quickly said yes, not knowing for sure what they were walking into.

“I’m not used to this number of people,” Dentino said. “I’ve never played in front of a crowd like this before. It was new to me. There’s music going on, a different thing than…