Men's Golf Struggles Against Stiff Competition

Faced with much tougher competition than at last weekend’s Doc Gimmler tournament, the Harvard men’s golf team finished 15th out of 16 schools at the Windon Memorial Classic in Lake Forest, Il.

“We had some pretty high expectations after last week, where we did very well; we destroyed the previous school record,” sophmore Rohan Ramnath said. “We played alright [at the Windon Memorial], [it] just was a much tougher golf course than last week’s and one of the strongest, if not the strongest, fields we will see all year.”

The Crimson finished the two-day tournament with a score of 899 (+60), a far cry from the four-under 860 by tournament host and winner Northwestern.

Coming into the final day three strokes behind second-round leader Kent State, Northwestern pulled out the victory with an even-par third round score, while the Golden Flashes faltered with a six-over 294 to finish three strokes behind the Wildcats.

On the individual side, tournament winner Chris O’Neill was the only competitor out of 87 to shoot all three rounds under par, finishing at an eight-under 208. O’Neill carried his Michigan team to third place, while teammate Brett McIntosh finished four strokes behind him and tied for third.

Filling out the podium for individual finishers was the Northwestern duo of Jack Perry and Matt Fitzpatrick, who had scores of 211 (-5) and 212 (-4), respectively. Fitzpatrick also tied for the lowest single-round score of the tournament, carding a six-under 66 in Sunday morning’s first round.

Further down the leaderboard but leading the Harvard golfers was Ramnath, who improved upon Sunday’s first- and second-round scores of 75 to finish the tournament on Monday with a third-round score of 73, good enough for a seven-over 223 and a tied for 31st finish. Ramnath had 17 pars and one bogey in his final round.

“It was a little frustrating for me today—I felt like I played pretty well and just couldn’t really capitalize on some chances I gave myself,” Ramnath said. “It was a mediocre kind of day and I was just plodding along…. I made a couple more puts today than I did yesterday so that’s why I scored a little bit better.”

The single upperclassman representing the Crimson this weekend, junior Akash Mirchandani scored five birdies in the final round on his way to a one-over 73 and a 40th-place finish with an eight-over 224.

Fresh off his first collegiate tournament at The Doc Gimmler last weekend and shooting from the first position for Harvard, freshman Robert Deng finished tied for 54th overall with an 11-over 227. Deng was relatively consistent over the weekend, shooting individual round scores of 75, 77, and 75.

“Overall, for myself, it’s been somewhat tough this weekend,” Deng said. “The conditions were really tough and it was getting highly difficult…. The pin [locations] were hard and the rough was cut slightly longer, so there was a bit of an added mental difficulty.”

The Crimson’s fourth and fifth scorers also struggled at the Knollwood Club. After shooting an even par second round, which was Harvard’s best single round score for the tournament, freshman Kendrick Vinar faded down the stretch, carding three double-bogeys and zero birdies on the day. He finished Monday with an 80 and the tournament with a 14-over 230 total.

Sophomore Un Cho didn’t fare much better, carding six double-bogeys on the weekend en route to a 236 (+20) score, which put him near the bottom of the leaderboard.

In contrast with the field at last weekend’s Doc Gimmler tournament, in which the Crimson finished behind Yale but ahead of Columbia and Princeton, Harvard was the only Ivy League representative at the Windon Memorial. The Crimson’s fall from second to second-to-last in the span of a week reflected the overall strength of the Windon Memorial field.

The team takes a brief break before heading to Philmont Country Club in Huntingdon Valley, PA to compete in the Temple Invitational on October 12-13. In order to move up the leaderboard going forward, though, Harvard will have to try to prevent its mistakes from compounding—the team shot 19 double-bogeys or worse over the weekend.

“Daily we work a lot on the process, and I think overall we did a good job of staying committed to our game plan,” Deng said. “Looking forward, we all have individual points to improve on—maybe chipping wasn’t on, maybe it was putting, or maybe the long [iron] game wasn’t on—we all have our own points that are [going to go] for us and against us in the upcoming weeks.”