Women's Golf Wins Season Opener

The Harvard women’s golf team won the Princeton Invitational tournament this weekend in Springdale, New Jersey. In addition to the team victory, junior Tiffany Lim was the individual champion at the event, winning by three strokes.

“We’re really excited that we won our first tournament of the season,” Lim said. “We’re also just exhausted after 54 holes this weekend.”

The success came at the home course of Ancient Eight rival Princeton, who pushed the Crimson in the Ivy Championships last season, finishing second by only one stroke.

The Harvard girls got off to an excellent start on Saturday with two team rounds of 291 over thirty six holes. By the end of the first day, the Crimson held a seven-stroke lead over Princeton.

“It’s always important to get off to a good start and we did that,” Harvard coach Kevin Rhoads said. “The team did that as a whole but we were helped out by Tiffany and her amazing first round. Then we just continued that start into the second day and were able to come away with the victory. It’s a really good start for our season.”

As well as the team played on Saturday, one girl stood out from the crowd. Lim’s six-under round of 66 was the course record at Springdale for women and set the tone for her championship performance.

“It was my best round that I have ever shot, certainly in a college tournament,” Lim said. “But I also knew that there were 18 more holes to go for that day and I was just taking it one shot at a time. I tried to do what I did in the first round for the rest of the tournament and I certainly felt helped by the rest of the team putting up good scores.”

Lim largely attributed her success in the first round to a little bit of luck and excellent putting, adding credence to the old Irish golfing adage that you ‘hit for show, but putt for dough’.

“[The secret to the round] was putting,” Lim said. “For me, it was just one of those days when anything I hit was just dropping. It was a very lucky day. I mean, I wasn’t hitting the ball very well but my putts were just falling every time I got up to the green.”

Lim capitalized on her first round with another excellent round of 72 to round out her Saturday with an overall lead of eight strokes. A comeback on Sunday by Columbia senior Michelle Piyapattra made the final margin of victory three strokes. Three shots further back in third place was last season’s Ivy Champion, Tiger Kelly Shon.

Outside of Tiffany, the rest of the team also excelled Sunday. The Crimson was able to add five strokes to its lead from Saturday to come away with a comfortable twelve-stroke victory.

To this point in the season, Rhoads has been emphasizing process over outcomes in training. Evidently the philosophy has paid dividends.

“We have been very much laying emphasis on process,” Rhoads said. “It sounds very simple but when it comes down to tournaments it’s about scoring. [The process] is what they need to do to make the scoring happen. So we’ve gone out and defined the things that are controllable that we need to focus on and made them our focus. It’s along the lines of the things we always say but we have made a stronger push to make us more accountable for those things.”

Appearing in their first collegiate tournament, freshmen Anne Cheng and Nina Fairbairn had strong showings, boding well for Harvard as it moves forward. Fairbairn finished eighteenth while Cheng ended the tournament tied for fourth.

“The freshmen have been very receptive of what the team has to offer them and are very excited about the whole process which is what we wanted for them,” Lim said. “Anne and Nina both had the game coming into the year so it is not unexpected that they played as well as they did.”