Golfers Falter, Finish Fourth As Dartmouth Takes NCAA's

So what the hell, we'll take it right to the end/As the days grow more complicated, the night life still wins. --Jimmy Buffet

Well, hey, it's reading period, and when there are only two days left of it, those days spent out on the golf course don't always get undivided attention. The Lamont nightlife tends to take over, if the fiber fatigue doesn't. And fourth place isn't really embarrassing when you wound up seventh last year.

Despite a euphoric third-place standing after the first round, the Harvard golf team finished an unspectacular fourth in the NCAA Division One tournament, held last Thursday and Friday at the Popowomut Country Club in West Warwick, R.I.

The team had high hopes of winning the ten-team tournament, but never improved the way they expected to in the second round.

Dartmouth captured first place and the trip to Palo Alto for the NCAA finals, totaling 155 on the second round after posting 316 on Thursday. URI took second and Providence stunned the hemisphere by finishing third, ahead of Harvard.

"We didn't have a good final day," coach Dick Crosby said yesterday, pointing out that only one player, sophomore Steve Baker, played consistently throughout the two-day tournament.

There was no scapegoat handy to explain the Crimson performance. The weather, usually conveniently outrageous in New England-staged competition, was beautiful. By the second day, the course was no longer the Potowomut Myster Course. Nobody's arm broke. Nobody's suntan lotion exploded.

However, the unspecified disease seemed to affect the entire tourney, not just the Harvard team. "No one played that well, not even the winners," Jon Mosle observed. "Dartmouth didn't burn up the course by any means."

Reports of bad starts and belligerent obstacles filtered back to Cambridge. "The first hole just killed everyone on the second day," Mosle said. When the first hole wipes out your whole team, that doesn't leave much hope for the next seventeen.

Co-captain Glenn Alexander was attacked while swinging his way from the first tee to the pin. "I got into a fight with a tree," he said from the safety of Quincy House yesterday, adding, "I lost."

Crosby, though disappointed, said he expects great things from next year's team. If Harvard improves at its present rate, it should take the Division One crown in 1982. Barring externalities, of course--like the nightlife in Lamont.