Golfers Storm to Seventh Place Finish

A quintet of Crimson linksters was buffeted by gale force winds and a torrential downpour at New Haven on Saturday but still managed to finish seventh out of a field of 28 colleges in the two-day Yale Invitational Tournament.

Harvard Captain Alex Vik followed a first round 74 with a 76 on Saturday, which because of the dismal weather turned out to be the low round of the day. Vik's 158 total placed him second just behind Princeton's Bruce Samaklis, who took medalist honors with rounds of 69 and 79 for 156.

Samaklis's Tiger teammates relinquished their first round lead as the University of Virginia won the team crown, while Southern Connecticut State College came from well back in the pack to finish a surprising second.

Playing at number two, freshman Glenn Alexander carded his second consecutive round of 79, and for the second straight day took a double bogey on the final hole. Alexander started Saturday's round on the tenth hole, so his costly miscue came on the 230-yard par three ninth, where he sprayed a four wood into a grove of trees.

The soggy conditions made shotmaking a hit or miss proposition. As Alexander put it, "you had to just bomb your shots and hope to get them through the puddles."

The rain took its toll on the remaining three Crimson linksters, as Spence Fitzgibbons went around in 85, Jim Dales piled up an 88, and George Arnold, who was missing his umbrella, took a soggy 91.

Even under normal conditions, the Yale Golf Club is one of the more demanding tests of golf in the country. It was designed by Charles Blair MacDonald, who won the first United States Amateur Championship in 1895. After learning to alay golf while attending St. Andrews University in Scotland, MacDonald returned to America and became a life-long proselytizer of the game.

MacDonald left to posterity a course of unkempt terrain, steep-faced bunkers, and mammoth greens that looks like a playground for some bygone race of giants.

While most of the 135 players were struggling to maintain respectable scores, Vik was cruising along at two over par after 13 holes before he began to falter. He botched his approach shot to the par five 16th, dumping a wedge into a greenside bunker.

Vik lost any chance of catching Samaklis' when he bogeyed 18th, another par five. The day before he had wedged up to the green but on Saturday he hit a five wood for his third shot and still came up short.

Next weekend the linksters will journey to UMass for the Bob Toski Invitational Tournament.