Men's Golf Has Roller Coaster Year

Of all the meets the men's golf team played during the fall and spring seasons, none typified its overall performance more than its last. the New England Division One Championships at the Pleasant Valley Country Club on March 28-29.

At that meet, the team put in a mediocre performance on the first day in ideal, 70-degree golf weather, and then put in its best performance of the season in second-round action in dreary,drizzle, horrible weather.

It was odd, ironic, and completely unpredictable, which is about how the rest of the season went for the team. Indeed, it was a year characterized not so much by consistent team performances as by sporadic, random individual performances of excellence.

"Overall, I'd say that we were pretty pleased with how everything went," senior Lou Body says. "We had a lot of good individual performances."

Coming into the season, the team didn't know just quite what to expect. Body was returning from the year before, but from the start it looked like the team would be relying on its large sophomore class-four of whom played regularly at different times in the year.

As the season got started, the team still didn't know quite what to expect from meet to meet, but it had a better idea of from whom it might expect it from. Early in the fall season, Body, junior Jack Wylie and sophomores Joel Radtke and Jun Choo established themselves as the top players.

The squad got the year off to a respectable start will a pretty respectable fall season. It opened the year on September 26-27 at the Portsmonth Country Club with a fifth-place finish out of 14 teams at the Wildcat Invitational, in which Radtke led the team with a 148 over 36 holes.

Next, it traveled to the Waterville Country Club for the ECAC North Qualifier meet, where is finished fourth out of 21 teams. Again, Radtke led the charge with a 75 over 18 holes, good enough for tenth place.

And last, it traveled to the New Seabury Country Club for the mammoth NEIGA Tournament, where it finished an impressive seventh out of 48 teams. This time, Choo paced the squad, shooting a 154 over 36 holes.

While it can be said that the team ended the fall season on a relative high point at the NEIGLA Tourney, it can't be said that it picked up where it left off in the spring season--it began on March 7 with a third-place finish in a meet with Princeton and Yale.

The woes continued the next week at the Ivy League Tournament at the Bethpage Country Club, where the team finished a disappointing fifth out of eight squads. Radtke led the team with a 242 over 72 holes, good for an 11th-place finish, and Body was close behind with a 246, good for 15th. Shortly after, the team was threatened with catastrophe when Body sprained his back in a hockey games, but the team almost compensated for him. Although its second-place finish behind Boston College at the Greater Boston Championships was disappointing, it put in a solid performance at the best overall performance of the season at the aformentioned New England Division One Championships.

The team was paced in the letter meet by Wylie, who shot a 153 over two days, good for 10th in the meet.

MEN'S GOLF

Record: 0-3-1

Ivy League : 0-3-1

Key Player: Lou Body, Jack Wylie, Joel Radtke

Seniors: Lou Body