Wu, Men's Golf Take Fifth

All the momentum, the good vibes and the strong play of late—none of it mattered for the Harvard men’s golf team this weekend at the Ivy Championships.

Riding the wave of victories over Dartmouth and Brown last weekend, the Crimson headed into this weekend’s championships at Metedeconk Golf Course in Jackson, N.J. poised to shock the world of college golf and take the title from defending champion Yale.

Instead, Harvard staggered back to Cambridge with a disappointing fifth-place showing, finishing behind the champion—Princeton—as well as Penn, Columbia and Yale.

“It’s pretty disappointing,” junior Chris Wu said. “I know a lot of guys on the team can play much better than we showed.”

The Crimson has battled through an up-and-down season that seemed to get a dramatic lift last weekend with impressive wins over the Big Green and the Bears. Particularly encouraging for Harvard was the play of its top two golfers, captain Andrew Klein and Wu. Both showed an ability to take advantage of scoring opportunities and put low numbers on the board, giving the Crimson what appeared to be a duo capable of matching the top two golfers from any other team.

But any dreams Harvard had of contending for the championship took a huge hit with Klein’s opening round. The senior, playing in his last Ivy competition, struggled to find the groove that had made him the Crimson’s most consistent player throughout the year. He finished the round with a 12-over par 84.

“The tough thing to believe is that I actually hit the ball pretty well,” Klein said. “I hit a lot of good shots and few bad ones, and unfortunately the bad ones cost me more than the good ones helped me.”

Klein rebounded nicely from his opening round troubles and finished with a three-round score of 239—good for the 15th-best individual score—but it wasn’t enough to vault Harvard back into contention.

While Klein struggled early, it was business as usual for Wu. The junior played his usual strong brand of golf, finishing in sole possession of fifth place with a three round total of 231.

Wu began strongly, posting an opening round 75—his low round for the tournament—that somewhat offset Klein’s rocky start.

After a second round 79, Wu bounced back yesterday. With the team championship clearly out of reach, Wu fought hard on the back nine to improve his individual placing—nailing birdies on the 10th, 14th and 16th holes en route to a closing round 77.

“You’re always trying to play your best,” said Wu, who also earned a selection to the all-Ivy team. “No matter what the stakes are, you want to go out and do your best.”

The Crimson’s other three players in the tournament, sophomore D.J. Hynes, and juniors Matt Amis and Steven Mungovan, played consistently throughout the tournament but couldn’t put together the stellar rounds needed to give Harvard a shot at the title.

While Hynes finished in 19th place with a score of 242, Mungovan and Amis had difficulty stringing solid rounds together and finished in 34th and 36th places respectively.

“We felt like we let one get away,” Klein said. “The entire field’s scores were pretty high. It’s a bummer.”

—Staff writer David H. Stearns can be reached at stearns@fas.harvard.edu.