Frosh Take Center Stage at Invitational

Early season inconsistency bedeviled the Harvard men’s golf team as it opened its spring season in Georgia on March 24-26 at the Jekyll Island Collegiate Invitational. The Crimson finished No. 16 among 24 teams on the Oleander Course, 82 shots behind eventual winner Methodist College.

Freshman Michael Shore led Harvard with a No. 53 finish out of the 127 players present, carding rounds of 80, 83, and 72 on the par-72 layout.

Shore continued to build on his solid fall, when he finished second on the team in stroke average.

“Being a freshman, it’s kind of hard to crack into the lineup sometimes,” senior D.J. Hynes said, “and he’s really stepped in and helped us out.”

Hynes himself was the team’s second-highest finisher, reaching the clubhouse with rounds of 75, 86, and 79 to tie for 76th.

“We had no rounds outside before we got down there,” Hynes said. “We’re just inconsistent. We had a couple of guys who shot one or two bad rounds with a good round.”

That trend was evident among all of the team’s other top scorers. Junior Tom Hegge was 81st with rounds of 84, 81, and 76, while senior James Cleary was 89th after days of 78, 89, and 77. Freshman John Christensen landed in 104th with scores of 83, 78, and 89, and senior Jean-Marc Monrad rounded out the scoring with scores of 83, 90, and 88, placing 114th.

As a team, the Crimson earned a three-day total of 948, six shots better than 17th-place Averett College and four shots behind 15th-place Hampden-Sydney College.

More important than the team results in the tournament was the experience gained by each individual golfer’s finally seeing an outdoor course during Spring Break.

“We were down there for 10 days,” Hynes said. “We were able to play 10 rounds, and we’re really down there to just play golf.”

“Over the winter you pretty much lose all the momentum and confidence you had from the fall,” Hegge said. “I think more important is the improvement we saw after the tournament.”

All of Harvard’s tournament competition came from southern schools who have not had to wait out the weather for practice time, exaggerating the Crimson’s inconsistencies.

“We went into the tournament with the right attitude,” Hagge said. “It’s really about preparing for the Yale tournament.”

That tournament, the Yale Spring Opener, will take place next weekend. It is one of just two tournaments the team will participate in before the Ivy League championships on Apr. 21-23.

—Staff writer Brad Hinshelwood can be reached at bhinshel@fas.harvard.edu.