Women's Golf Finishes Fourth in Fall Opener

The weekend saw different sorts of firsts for members old and new on the Harvard women’s golf squad, which finished fourth in its first tournament of the 2015-2016 campaign.

“I think we were just really pumped to be at our first tournament of the season,” junior Anne Cheng said.

Iowa, the winner of the team competition, was led by the tournament’s individual winner, sophomore Jessica Ip, who had two rounds under par and distanced herself from the field with a second-round 69 en route to a 10-stroke victory.

But Ip was not the only underclassman to finish near the top on the leaderboard.

Despite the Diane Thomason Invitational being Crimson freshman Michelle Xie’s first collegiate tournament and the first time she had played 36 holes in one day for a competition, the Palo Alto, Calif., native kicked off her Harvard career with a plus-6 score, placing her in a tie for second.

“It was really great being able to perform well,” Xie said. “The entire tournament I tried to stay consistent, which I was able to do for the most part.”

Xie started from hole three in the first round, and nerves did not seem to affect her ball striking from the outset. She was under par through her first nine holes of the season and carded a first-round 73.

Again beginning from the third hole in her second round of the day, Xie stumbled slightly at the end of her round, turning in three-consecutive bogeys on holes 34 through 36. However, buoyed by three birdies in the same round, Xie again finished with a 73. While a third-round 76 was her worst of the weekend, the effort was still enough to earn the second-place tie.

Another newcomer to collegiate golf competition was freshman Anna Zhou, who sandwiched a second round 80 with first and third round scores of 77. Also from Palo Alto, Calif., Zhou was near the top of the par-three leaderboard, posting a plus-2 overall mark over the weekend. However, par fours gave Zhou a tougher time, with her 4.43 shot par-four average leaving her in the bottom half of the field.

Elsewhere on the Finkbine Golf Course, which had only one hole with a scoring average under par for the whole tournament, two-time first-team All-Ivy recipient Cheng had more than bunkers and thick rough to deal with. An oversight on her part led to her accidentally signing her first-round scorecard even though one hole did not have a numerical score written down on the physical piece of paper. As a result, Cheng’s first-round score was disqualified.

“It was a careless mistake,” Cheng said. “It was really surprising…[but] I would much rather this happen now than any tournament later [in the year].”

After posting a solid plus-2 following the scorecard mishap, Cheng completed her weekend with a Sunday score of 81, with just one birdie to her name.

Coming in second on the Harvard team for the weekend and tying for 13th overall was sophomore Lito Guo, who overcame a team-worst first-round score of 79 to finish plus-12 for the weekend.

Consistency was key for the Auckland, New Zealand, native in overcoming early struggles. While her front-nine score in round one was under par, six consecutive holes where she recorded a bogey or worse raised her score considerably.

But in round two, Guo kept her mistakes from snowballing, as she only had back-to-back over-par holes once. Three birdies in that same round put her right back into top-20 contention.

The lone senior of the group, captain Christine Lin, started at a blistering pace with birdies in three of her first five holes of the tournament. But the birdies would run dry, and seven bogeys in the final 13 holes dampened her strong start.

Lin would finish her tournament in 20th place, with six total birdies over the three rounds.

As a team, the Crimson was at or near the top of the 12-squad field in individual scoring for all types of holes. Xie’s 4.10 average on par fours was good enough for second among the field. Par threes were Harvard’s strength, as the Crimson posted an average individual hole score of 3.18, which was ahead of tournament winner Iowa.

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