BRIEF: Women's Golf Finishes Fourth at the Silverado Showdown

After an up and down first round that saw the group shoot 15 shots off the lead, the Crimson women’s golf team turned in lower scores in each of its next two rounds, finishing fourth among a stacked field at the Silverado Showdown in Napa, Calif.

In a battle of Beaver State five-person teams that came down to the final holes, 32nd-ranked Oregon held onto the lead on the final day, holding off Oregon State by just one stroke.

The 15-team tournament attracted six squads that were ranked in the top 50 nationally, but Harvard managed to top four of those teams with the second-best team score in the final round. The Crimson jumped from sixth to fourth place after a third-round team score of plus-2.

Leading Harvard was sophomore Anne Cheng, whose fifth-place finish lifted the Crimson to the top-five result. Cheng, who teed off out of the first spot for Harvard, saw her score drop as the tournament went on, and eventually shot a one-under-par 71 in the final round. She had entered the day just inside the top 20, but a solid last round pushed her towards the top of the leaderboard.

Senior Brenna Nelsen, who is also a Crimson sports editor, had the third-best round three score shooting out of the third spot, and her 69 on Tuesday afternoon vaulted her 20 spots to a 13th-place finish—the same spot as junior teammate Courtney Hooton, who shot a 72 and 73 in her second and third rounds, respectively.

While Harvard was in the middle of the pack for par 3 and par 5 scoring for the tournament, it’s 4.17 par 4 average topped all teams. The Crimson also had the second-most birdies for the event with 31.

Among other schools, the Crimson topped No. 12 Northwestern and No. 34 California, the former by two strokes and the latter by four.

—Staff writer Caleb Y. Lee can be reached at caleb.lee@thecrimson.com.