By now, most Badger fans have heard of the UW hockey brother-sister combination of Adam and Nikki Burish. Earlier this month, the Madison natives became the first sibling tandem to win the national championship in their respective sports.

While the Burish's have been the talk of the town lately, they only represent one of the brother-sister combinations UW athletics has to offer. Freshman Tyler Obermueller and his sister Jackie have been making significant contributions to the UW golf program this season.

Jackie is a fifth-year senior, and during her tenure at UW, she has been the most consistent golfer for the Badgers. According to UW head coach Todd Oehrlein, she is a leader both on and off the course for a team that currently has six underclassmen.

"You're always looking to get the most out of your players, and I feel we get the most out of Jackie," Oehrlein said. "[Jackie's] as competitive as anyone on the team, yet she has steadily made progress and improvement. She works real hard on the golf course, and other players see her concentration and work habits and they emulate what she does."

Since the older Obermueller arrived on the scene in 2002, her scoring average has decreased every season. Currently, Jackie is averaging 79.5 strokes per round, and she has competed in 19 of the Badgers 22 tournament rounds this season, tying for third-most on the team.

In the Badgers' most-recent tournament, UW tied for 10th at the Mountain View Collegiate. Jackie tied for 51st overall, and her final round 77 was key to the Badgers top-10 finish.

However, Jackie's best outing of the year came in the Badger Invitational, where she tied for 29th.

"This year, I've really been working on the mental side of my game in terms of maturity and course management," Obermueller said. "I've matured a lot since I started here, and being able to handle bad shots and bad days has really helped me be successful."

While Jackie has thoroughly enjoyed her time as a student athlete at UW, she maintains that she placed no pressure on her brother Tyler to follow in her footsteps.

According to Tyler, she didn't have to.

"Just knowing how much [Jackie] has enjoyed the school and the golf program kind of put Wisconsin on the top of my list," Tyler said. "Being able to represent the state of Wisconsin is really important to me. But what really clinched it is [head coach Jim] Schuman because he's the guy who can take my game to the next level."

In the fall of 2005, Tyler posted a 74.4 scoring average while competing in 12 tournaments. Although he has made significant contributions on the course this season, it was a tournament that Tyler did not play in that really impacted his game.

"Unfortunately I did make the trip for the first tournament of the year, and that drove me to try as hard as I could to not stay home again because I hated the feeling of sitting at home and watching my teammates go play," he said. "After that, all I wanted to do was play golf and show that I deserve to be out there."

According to Schuman, Tyler has the necessary skills to be a major contributor to the team over the course of his career.

"We saw two very important things in Tyler [Obermueller] — one, he is very competitive and secondly, he has an unbelievable short game," Schuman said. "That combination of attitude, competitiveness and a great short game leads to good things on the course, and that's what we want to see from him."

While an excellent short game can get you out of many problematic situations on the golf course, both Tyler and his coach agree that he must harness some of his aggressive shot selections.

Because Tyler is so effective from inside 100 yards, he is often tempted to take risks, hoping his short game will be able bail him out if something goes wrong.

"I think my short game is a product of a lot of different things," Tyler said. "Being a multi-athlete allows you to get a feel of different ways to do things, and a lot of times you need to be creative and imaginative with chip shots. And also, I grew up right near a golf course, and as a kid, I would be chipping from when the sun came up to when the sun went down."

While Jackie is five years older than Tyler, they maintain a close relationship and both share a competitive nature that allows them to be successful on the golf course. Growing up in River Falls, Wis., the siblings have been playing against each other for nearly their whole lives.

While the sibling rivalry is without a doubt present, both feel they have benefited from the direct competition.

"My brother and me are very close, but when we're on the golf course together, it gets very competitive," Jackie said. "But regardless, we have both taught and learned a lot from each other."

"We're similar because we hate to lose," Tyler said. "We have an attitude that it doesn't matter what our swing looks like because were going to put the ball in the hole someway or somehow."