Men's Golfers Weather Disappointing Season

1996

Sports Statistics

Record: 0-2

Coach: Bob Leonard

Key Players: Co-captain Luis Sanchez and Ed Boyda, Senior Darren Kilfara; Sophomore Craig MacDonald

1997

In the end, we had Luis Sanchez. Thank goodness, for everyone else was only so much roster fodder.

Our Guatemalan co-captain on the Harvard golf team ends the year ranked as the eighth-best collegiate golfer in New England. He finishes as the second-strongest force in Harvard golf; once again, the clearest dominator was the weather, although this year Mother Nature gave us even more trouble than she has in recent memory.

Despite a relatively mild winter, we lost the prestigious New England Championships to the monsoons back in October, then had two 36-hole days reduced to 18 holes in the spring. And when the elements let us play, by and large, our performances were as patchy as the average New England February afternoon.

Not once did we have one of those magical tournaments where everyone came together and clicked to post a sub-305 or sub-300 team one-round score. We all played well in spots; I, a senior, started the year by leading the team with a pair of 76s at the UNH Invitational, where we finished in ninth place out of 13 teams. Too, sophomore Doug MacBean promised much with his 74-79 at UNH, but as happened with me, this early rush of form was for Doug only a sort of false dawn.

We proceeded to then qualify for the ECAC Championships, never a mean feat, but only Luis put two decent rounds together. His 77-77 tied him for 10th overall--but our team 351 in the second round was a number to erase. My 88 in round two was our second-best number--the other players' identities and scores are being withheld to protect the innocent.

The cancellation of our big fall trip to New Seabury down on the Cape, host of the NEIGA's, was no minimal loss. Thus did we go into our usual winter hibernation a touch early, meaning the rust to be scraped off of our swings would only be that much thicker.

Spring break comes, and a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of fun and sun; our trip to Acapulco and Mexico City did not disappoint, even though I had my wallet stolen on a Mexico City subway platform and even though our form--with the key exception of senior co-captain Ed Boyda--was unexceptional. But thereafter, the season turns back into the wind and rain of Massachusetts, and once more we were back to playing golf in conditions that begged for galoshes and thermals, not softspikes and shorts.

Our first two spring rounds were played at Yale, a golf course eliciting a love-hate relationship even at the best of times. Take the bizarre case of sophomore Craig MacDonald: Com- of sophomore Craig MacDonald: Coming in virtually cold after missing the trip to Mexico, the native of Nova Scotia posted a solid 78 in treacherous, though familiar weather during the Harvard-Yale-Princeton match.

But in the Yale Invitational, on the same golf course a week later, MacDonald's putting deserted him and he ballooned to a number 12 shots worse!

Still, we finished sixth out of 15 at Yale, paced by junior Andy Rourke's 80.

Onto Ivies, then, and a drab, rain-swept effort that saw us finish fifth, with Luis struggling to get on top of his game and nobody breaking 160 in a rain-shortened event. But thereafter things turned for the better:

We won the Greater Bostons for the first time in five years, pipping MIT to the post by eight shots, and then in Portland, Maine in the Spring New Englands, Luis finally burst forth in a blaze of birdies.

His even-par 70 in the second round--and he missed a three-footer at the last--moved him from eight shots off of the 18-hole pace to second place, only one behind the winner; buoyed also by 76s from Craig and Ed, we rallied for our best team score of the year, a 305.

That happy note, and the subsequent splitting of a match with Brown (win) and Dartmouth (loss), should have been our swan song, but the loss of the New Seabury tournament meant we could add the Army Invitational to our schedule in early May.

Again, the weather was a dampening influence, but senior Oliver Hsiang still made the most of his first start, shooting a 79 on day two.

Luis posted a pair of 79s himself, which proved to be the popular number, as I also pitched in a 79 on top of my first-round 80. Not such hot scoring on an eminently easy course, perhaps, but at least I could go out on something of a high note: In that 80, I was 11 over after 12 holes but rallied to play the last six in two under, sparked by a 2-iron which I holed for eagle on a soaking par 4.

The team only gets younger from here: Andy and Alex Gonzalez will be next year's co-captains, and players like Craig, Doug, sophomore Nick Saunders and freshman Steve Ranere will fight for those elusive five-man roster spots.

But with Luis, Ed, Oliver and me gone, team chemistry figures to change completely.

Perhaps, some of my younger comrades may say (in light of the immodesty which compelled me to write this piece in the first place), not a moment too soon

But in the Yale Invitational, on the same golf course a week later, MacDonald's putting deserted him and he ballooned to a number 12 shots worse!

Still, we finished sixth out of 15 at Yale, paced by junior Andy Rourke's 80.

Onto Ivies, then, and a drab, rain-swept effort that saw us finish fifth, with Luis struggling to get on top of his game and nobody breaking 160 in a rain-shortened event. But thereafter things turned for the better:

We won the Greater Bostons for the first time in five years, pipping MIT to the post by eight shots, and then in Portland, Maine in the Spring New Englands, Luis finally burst forth in a blaze of birdies.

His even-par 70 in the second round--and he missed a three-footer at the last--moved him from eight shots off of the 18-hole pace to second place, only one behind the winner; buoyed also by 76s from Craig and Ed, we rallied for our best team score of the year, a 305.

That happy note, and the subsequent splitting of a match with Brown (win) and Dartmouth (loss), should have been our swan song, but the loss of the New Seabury tournament meant we could add the Army Invitational to our schedule in early May.

Again, the weather was a dampening influence, but senior Oliver Hsiang still made the most of his first start, shooting a 79 on day two.

Luis posted a pair of 79s himself, which proved to be the popular number, as I also pitched in a 79 on top of my first-round 80. Not such hot scoring on an eminently easy course, perhaps, but at least I could go out on something of a high note: In that 80, I was 11 over after 12 holes but rallied to play the last six in two under, sparked by a 2-iron which I holed for eagle on a soaking par 4.

The team only gets younger from here: Andy and Alex Gonzalez will be next year's co-captains, and players like Craig, Doug, sophomore Nick Saunders and freshman Steve Ranere will fight for those elusive five-man roster spots.

But with Luis, Ed, Oliver and me gone, team chemistry figures to change completely.

Perhaps, some of my younger comrades may say (in light of the immodesty which compelled me to write this piece in the first place), not a moment too soon