Golf Teams Bogey At Ivies

Both Harvard golf teams were in action this week, but neither team could finish higher than fifth at their respective Ivy League championships.

The men shot 318-318-317=953, eight strokes behind Dartmouth. Princeton won the title, posting a 901 during the two-day event held at Metedeconk Country Club in Jackson, N.J.

None of the Crimson duffers was able to place in the top ten and thus make the All-Ivy team. Junior Andrew Malcolm was the closest, finishing in 11th place with a 232, one stroke out of tenth place.

Senior Tim Deardourff shot a 239 and freshman Andrew Klein was right behind with a 241.

Despite improving one position after two consecutive seventh-place finishes at the Ivies, Malcolm was not pleased with the results.

"The Harvard golf team is definitely a class of underachievement," he said. "We feel we have as good a team of golfers as anyone else."

Beginning on Tuesday, the Crimson competed at the New England Championships, a 23-team, two-round tournament held at Maplegate Country Club in nearby Bellingham, Mass.

The squad regressed from the weekend, and Malcolm, who had been the best golfer for Harvard at the Ivies, shot an 82-83=165 to place second-worst on the team.

"I played like complete ass," Malcolm said.

The poor performance hurt Malcolm in more areas than his pride. Before the tournament, his stroke average was four above the necessary mark to qualify as an Academic All-American, but the recent performance puts his average on the margin.

"We're consistently disappointed," Malcolm said. "Are we disappointed every time we tee off? Yes."

Luckily, the "complacent acceptance of disappointment", as Malcolm puts it, did not affect the women's team, though the results were not much better.

The women shot a 703 in the two-round Ivy tournament, held at Forsgate Country Club in Jamesburg, N.J. That was three strokes better than last-place Penn (Cornell and Columbia were not present) and 78 strokes short of Princeton, who won the title.

Freshman Meredith Chiampa posted an 85-78=163, which tied her for eleventh place, one stroke out of the top ten.

"The first day we were disappointed, but we talked with the coaches and tried to think about fixing out mistakes," Chiampa said. "We were happy with our improvement the next day."

With an increased interest in golf on the national level, the women's team is looking to move into the upper echelon of the Ivy League in the near future.

"We are a relatively young team," Chiampa said. "The interest is there."

The men's team's next and final competition is this weekend at the University of Rhode Island Invitational. The women will take part in the Massachusetts State championships and then the New England championships