Golf Wins Key Yale Matchup

DUXBURY, Mass.--April 8, 1993: Jack Nicklaus wakes up the echoes of a hibernating Golden Bear, tying for the first-round lead of The Masters with a first-round 67.

Same date: Harvard dusts Yale by 25 shots in the oldest intercollegiate golf match in the country here at the Duxbury Yacht Club course.

All is right in the golfing world.

Of course, the Crimson did lose to Princeton by ten strokes today in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton match, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a Harvard golfer that cared.

"I don't really mind losing to Princeton," sophomore Captain Jack Wylie said. "I'm just glad we crushed Yale. I hate Yale."

Princeton figures to be one of the teams to beat in the Ivy League; its five-man total of 390, while not breathtaking, is a solid early-season number for the rest of the Ancient Eight to shoot at.

Pacing that effort was the 73 shot by the 'Tigers' seventh man, Rob Koehn, theoretically Princeton's weakest player. But if Nicklaus can charge towards his seventh green jacket like he did today, anything must be possible.

Freshman Joel Radkte led Harvard with a 76.

"I'm pretty happy with the way I played," he said. "I have to cut down one some of my mental errors if I'm to re-attain my old level [of play], but for the first match of the season, it was pretty good."

Coach Satisfied

"I'm satisfied with the way the team played," echoed Coach Bob Leonard. "If it weren't for a couple of bad breaks, we might have won."

Typifying the roller-coaster that many of the Crimson rode today was Wylie's round. After an ugly snowman (the dreaded 8) on the short par-five fourth, he righted himself, playing the next 11 holes in only one-over par.

But a bogey-bogey-bogey finish, including a three-putt green at the 18th, left a sour taste in his mouth following his 79.

"The last green was awfully slick putting downhill from the back," he said. "Still, I shouldn't have three-jacked it."

The Duxbury greens were bumpy--normal for a New England course this early in the year--and that kept scores high, so the team expects lower scores (and a possible title) farther south tomorrow in the Yale Invitational at New Haven.

That is, if its animosity toward the Yalies doesn't distract it from firing at the sticks.