Crimson Struggles to 14th-Place Result

Although the Harvard men’s golf team found itself in contention after the first round of play at the Windon Memorial in Glencoe, Ill., the Crimson was unable to build any momentum against tough competition in its most recent tournament, finishing 14th out of 15 teams.

Harvard finished with a total score of 934 (+82) for the tournament, which consisted of three rounds occurring Sunday and Monday.

Ohio State ended the weekend in first place, after accumulating an impressive final round score of +5.

The strong finish enabled the Buckeyes to leapfrog over the second place finishers Northwestern, which ended its third round at +15.

While other teams in contention after two rounds finished with scores well over par, Ohio State was able to take advantage of thirteen birdies in the final round to ultimately seal the victory. The Buckeyes finished with an overall score just 29 strokes over par.

Sophomore Akash Mirchandani posted the best score out of all the Harvard golfers, finishing +13 over three rounds of play.

Mirchandani was relatively consistent throughout the tournament, with his best score of +2 coming in the first round and his worst of +6 in the second.

Junior captain Theodore Lederhausen also played solid golf and totaled a final score of +16.

Lederhausen kept his score low by racking up seven birdies over the course of the tournament.

“I was hitting it pretty well, but I hit some costly shots occasionally,” Lederhausen said. “But overall it felt pretty good.”

The Crimson’s third and fourth place scorers—sophomore Seiji Liu and freshman Un Cho—were neck-and-neck for most of the tournament, ultimately finishing with the same score. Both players were +27 in what was Cho’s first collegiate golf tournament.

Harvard’s final competitor, Kevin McCarthy, finished with an individual score of +36.

The Crimson was the only Ivy League team at the Windon Memorial. Schools from across the country made the trip to Illinois, ranging from UC Davis to Indiana to Costal Carolina.

“The field was very strong,” Lederhausen said. “There were a lot of good teams, so we learned from seeing what they were doing.”

After the first round of play, Harvard found itself near the bottom of the leaderboard in 13th place. Mirchandani led the Crimson with a +2 score of 73, and he was closely followed by Lederhausen at +4.

The second round brought about worse results for Harvard, which posted the highest second-round score (310) out of all 15 competing teams, bumping the team down to 14th place, eleven shots ahead of Florida Atlantic.

The Crimson ended the tournament on a slightly better note, accumulating a score of 307 in the third and final round, putting them in 11th place for the day. The course seemed to play harder for all teams during the final round of play.

Consistency was hard to come by for everyone, as only three teams managed to break 300 strokes in every round played, a testament to the difficulty of the course.

“[This tournament] will be a good learning experience in general because the course was really tough,” Lederhausen said. “It really makes you think in a good way.”

Harvard golfers pieced together strings of holes during which they played relatively mistake-free, with pars accompanied by the occasional birdie and bogey.

But every player also went through stretches when consecutive bogeys and double bogeys cost him valuable strokes.

In the end, the Crimson was unable to establish a comfortable rhythm that other schools were able to find.

Day one of play was suspended due to darkness with players midway through the back nine, so second-round play had to be resumed Monday morning.

“It was tough [Sunday] night, as we were finishing in the dark. This morning, we [began] on the hardest hole of the course which kind of showed in our scores,” Lederhausen said. “We didn’t think of it as a problem, but it was definitely kind of tough.”

Harvard looks to bounce back this weekend at the MacDonald Cup in New Haven, Conn., the team’s third tournament in as many weeks.

Other members of the golf team could not be reached by phone because they were midflight.