It’s 6 a.m. on a Tuesday morning.
And for senior Patrick Adler and sophomore Ryan Banas, it’s time for breakfast.
Yet, they aren’t prepping bacon or eggs but sinking putts and honing in on wedge distances.
The Breakfast Club, as created by Adler and former assistant coach Jace Long last spring, has been one the reasons Adler has had so much success during the fall season of his senior year.
“I sat down with our old assistant Jace and talked about how I can become as good of a player as I can be,” Adler said. “Jace just kept on going back to working harder than anybody else and working when nobody else is working.
“Jace texted me and was like, ‘Hey, why don’t you come in at 6 a.m. tomorrow?’ So, he met me here and I had a great practice and knew that I accomplished something that day and had worked really hard.”
Adler still has open seats in his diner booth, so asking his high school friend and teammate Banas to grab a menu and slide in was easy.
“I mentioned it to Ryan because I know how hard he works and I’ve seen his work ethic, so I knew it was something he would want to do,” Adler said.
Both posted top ten finishes this fall, with Adler medaling twice at the Windon Memorial Classic and the RedHawk Intercollegiate, which Marquette won.
“Something that Coach [Steve Bailey] talks about is getting out there and having so much confidence that you’ve stacked all the bricks,” Adler said. “When you step up onto that first tee, there’s nothing else I can do. I’ve put in all the work.”
Banas, who made one start last season at the Golden Eagles’ home Intercollegiate at Erin Hills, said practicing alongside Adler in the early mornings has helped slow the game down for him.
“Slowly, it all starts to come together,” Banas said. “You keep stacking the days and all the early mornings on top of all the practice sessions with the team. Whenever I’m nervous in a tournament, that’s one of the things I look back to and it’s an obstacle that Patrick and I did a good job of overcoming.”
Banas has now played in all five fall events and is second on the team in scoring average behind Adler through the autumn campaign with an average round of 73.00. Adler leads the team with a scoring average of 70.53.
Head coach Steve Bailey said both players’ successes are byproducts of the work that the two have put in.
“It wasn’t like they clicked their heels and something magical happened,” Bailey said. “It was found in the dirt. They have been gritty, and we always talk about how you have to do things that are uncommon to be successful, and they have really embraced it.”
Marquette won’t tee it up again until Feb. 3 for the Big East Match Play event at Bear Lakes Country Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Until then, the team will utilize their practice facilities at the Athletic and Human Performance Research Center and Valley Fields to prepare for the spring season.
“I want them to keep that chip on their shoulder,” Bailey said. “We have had a pretty good fall, but we we have 40-some teams to go catch.”
Each player is given a practice plan to follow throughout the winter on a Google sheet. Adler and Banas knock out some of their drills in the mornings at Breakfast Club.
“You can say you are going to Breakfast Club, and you wake up at 6 a.m. to practice, but if you don’t have a set plan for yourself and you are whacking balls and hitting putts all over the place, you aren’t really getting better,” Adler said.
“In the spring, if you get into a rut, you can look back at the Google sheet and look at all the work you did in the winter. You can see the growth that you went through and it’s something you can look back on to give you confidence.”
This story was written by Trevor Hilson. He can be reached at [email protected] or @hilsontrevor on Twitter/X.
