Harvard Disappointed With Macdonald Finish

In the sport of golf, home field advantage goes a long way.

Just ask the Yale men’s team, which walked away with first place at this weekend’s Macdonald Cup on its home turf, The Course at Yale—a course designed by co-founder of the USGA Charles Blair Macdonald in 1926.

When’re you’re playing on a course that ranks 71st on Golf Magazine’s list of the 100 most difficult courses in the world, any practice helps.

For the Bulldogs, routine practice on the challenging course is the norm.

But for the less habituated Harvard, it felt like, well, one of the most difficult courses in the world.

“It is a very difficult course, very tricky,” sophomore Mark Pollak said.

“It’s a course you need to play multiple times before you have a handle on it. The greens are very big, undulated, very difficult to read. There are a lot of blind shots.”

But for the Harvard golfers, the rainy weather actually helped to keep scores lower. The greens at The Course are traditionally firm, but the rain softened things out, making for an easier hold.

“Our scores would have won any other time at Yale,” sophomore Tony Grillo said.

“I think [Yale’s leader Tom McCarthy] shot a six under, which I think is probably a team record.”

The Crimson finished with a share of sixth—tied with Bryant University—amid the 15-team field. Harvard combined to shoot 864 over the three-round weekend.

Pollak was the Crimson’s first-round leader, shooting a 71 on the par-70 course.

Pollak slipped in the second round, shooting +4, before running three over in round three to finish the tournament at +8.

“We’re a little diasppointed,” Pollak said.

“We played well last week, and I felt like we didn’t have everything together this week.”

Grillo, who kept active this summer by competing in the USGA National Amateur Championships, finished second among Harvard golfers through the first round of play at +2. Grillo shot one under in Round 2 and another 72 in Round 3 to lead the Crimson scorers over the entire weekend.

“I had a good weekend,” Grillo said. “I was able to keep it together even when I didn’t feel like I was playing my best. I was able to grind it out.”

Tying Pollak, senior Greg Shuman shot 76, 69, and 73 over the weekend to also finish at eight over par.

Rounding out Harvard’s scorers, captain Danny Mayer had a tough first round, shooting a 77, but improved in each subsequent round going +3 in Round 2 before shooting par in the final round to finish at +10.

Rookie Max Campion, who notched a +13 in last weekend’s McLaughlin tournament in Bethpage, was the team’s fifth man, completing the tournament in 227 shots for +17.

Yale won the tournament with a combined score of 842.

The Bulldogs were recovering from last week’s play where it lost narrowly to Dartmouth, which finished ninth this past weekend.

“They’re an extremely good team,” Pollak said of Yale. “Playing that course on a day-to-day basis helps them a lot. They may be little half-stroke advantages, but in the end, it adds up to a significant difference.”

Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth were the only Ivy schools competing this weekend, just two weeks shy of the Ivy Match Play.

The Crimson saw Dartmouth last weekend, edging the Big Green by seven strokes.

Heading into the back half of the fall season, Harvard remains confident about its standing among the stiff competition in the rest of the Ivy league.

But before it can begin thinking about the Ivy play at Bay Club, the Crimson first needs to get past the Big 5 Invitational at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, where it will likely see Yale again, as well as Princeton

“We went into this tournament looking to win,” Grillo said. “We have a really solid lineup. As much as this [weekend] is a small step backwards for us, it definitely doesn’t set us back as far as the season goes.”

“One tournament doesn’t always tell you everything,” Pollak added.

—Staff writer Dixon McPhillips can be reached at fmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.