Friendly Greens Bring Fourth-Place Finish

Harvard men’s golf, fresh off a tournament win at Yale last weekend, took fourth place at the New England Division I Championships in Providence, R.I. on the Triggs Memorial Golf Course.

Yale took the victory and top two individual finishes as junior Colby Moore scorched the field with a -4 finish. As a team, the Bulldogs shot 583 (290, 293). Binghamton cruised to second place, a full five shots back. Sacred Heart finished in third, 13 shots off Yale. Harvard snapped up fourth place, shooting 598 (303, 295) to finish just two shots behind third. After round one, this top four was already cemented.

Sophomore Danny Mayer tied for the fourth-best individual performance and paced the team, shooting a 74 on day one and a 70 on day two—the daily low round in the field of 59. The course had been friendly to Mayer in the past. Last year at the tournament, Mayer tied for third individually and shot a 72 during the single round played. As a team, Harvard placed 10th out of the field of 17, as Sacred Heart won the 2007 championship with a single day score of 310.

“I worked on my putting a bit more after the first round, [and] I think it improved slightly in the second round, but it’s still not where I wanted,” Mayer said. “My ball striking was really solid in the second round. [Yesterday] I had a pretty boring round. I made 16 pars and two birdies and I hit 16 greens. It was just hit green, two-putt, move on, with no adventurous shots.”

In the field of 11 schools, the average team score was 307 and average player score 78.03. On this par 72 course, only eight rounds were recorded below even. Of the three players who completed the tournament below par, two of them were from Yale.

“It was a nice course. The greens were pretty quick,” sophomore Nick Moseley said. “The back nine was a lot easier than the front nine with a lot of birdie holes. You’ve got to come in strong. We just never really played together and so couldn’t play our best.”

“There’s not much to it,” Mayer said of the straightforward course.

Behind Mayer, junior captain Michael Shore put in the next best Harvard performance shooting 75-74, tying him for 10th individually. Last week Shore led the Yale tournament, helping to put together the Harvard victory. Sophomore Greg Shuman contributed two rounds at 76 and tied for 20th. Moseley shot 78 both days and junior John Christensen shot 83-75.

“We just kept trying to play our same game as last weekend,” Moseley said. “We’re gearing up for Ivies. We played well, we just didn’t pull out a win this weekend.”

“I think we came in there with slightly higher expectations—that’s not necessarily a good thing,” Mayer added. “But, I think we didn’t do as well as we would have liked but we didn’t do horribly—I’d call it an average week.”

Pleasant conditions made for uncomplicated play.

“It was pretty warm the first day; we thought it was going to rain,” Moseley said. “[Yesterday] it was a little colder a little windier. Overall it was pretty fair.”

Next weekend, the team will travel south to New Jersey for the Ivy League Championship, the focal point of the men’s season. Penn will return to defend the title and the Crimson will look to improve on last year’s fifth-place finish.

The Ancient Eight will gather to play the Ballyowen Golf Course in Hamburg, N.J., a links-style golf course known for its few trees and fast, undulating greens. In this weekend’s tournament, Dartmouth and Brown, finished behind Harvard in fifth and sixth place, respectively. Yale, however, remains the team to beat.

—Staff writer Elizabeth A. Joyce can be reached at eajoyce@fas.harvard.edu.