Golfers Take Greater Boston Tourney

The Harvard linksters braved winds yesterday that were last seen in the Topeka twister that carried Dorothy off to Oz as they won The Greater Boston Golf Championship over a five-school field.

Buffeted by the gusts, the Crimson complied a team aggregate of 858 strokes for the 36-hole expedition over the Concord Country Club, with seven sub-90 rounds for the second 18, which proved quite an achievement on the permafrostslick greens.

One Northeastern player shot rueful rounds of 97 and 108. His scorecard will remain an anonymous if ignoble fragment. "It was a horror show," summed up Chris Ball.

At number one for Harvard, Alex Vik hitched up his polyesters a la Arnold Palmer and fired a 79 for the morning, the only round under 80 for the entire tournament. Vik ballooned to an 86 for his second 18, putting with his seven-iron on the corrugated greens.

Vik's 165 total put him in second place individually, one stroke behind tourney medalist John McCann of B.C., who carded 80, 84--164 on the par-71, 6328-yard layout.

On the Green

Vik used his seven-iron to tap in a birdie putt on his last hole but still had to sink a number of character-builders to avoid five-putting.

The linksmen had four players within the top nine. At a logjam at 173 were four players who tied for ninth, including the Crimson's Tom Edwards and Spence Fitzgibbons. "Fast Eddie" zipped around with rounds of 87 and 86 while Fitzgibbons came back from a 90 in the morning with closing 83. Edwards in fact shot a 76 for his tenth through 27 holes.

Jim Dales finished in splendid isolation at eighth with a 172. Ball coped with the winds despite his high-trajectory rainmaker irons to log rounds of 89 and 86. Ron Himelman trailed him by a stroke at 176.

Used to It

"Par was an 85 out there," said coach Bob Donovan. "Some of the adverse conditions we've played under this spring finally helped us because we handled the winds better than the other teams."

It was a disheartened group of Harvard linksters who came into the clubhouse after the morning 18, but then they realized the rest of the field was also finding bunker shots comparable to hitting into a sand storm in the Gobi desert.

Harvard finished a hefty 12 strokes ahead of second place Tufts. B.C. finished third, five strokes ahead of MIT, and a woeful Northeastern squad brought up the rear.

An unlikely guest entry was the Florida Institute of Technology squad, which is touring the Northeast. The Floridians, coached by Henry Scott, who played in the same backfield with Bob Hayes at Texas A& M, unofficially finished second.

The Crimson will try to continue following the yellow brick road when they play in the NCAA qualifying tourney on Thursday and Friday.