Women's Golf Places 9th at Princeton Invitational

Entering its second tournament thus far on the season, the Harvard women’s golf team traveled south to compete in the Princeton Invitational. In its first three round event of the season, the Crimson walked away with a ninth place finish.

The tournament took place at the Springdale Golf Course. The 6,100 yard course played at a par 72 for the weekend. The course features two par five holes and four par threes. Two rounds were played throughout the day Saturday, with one additional round taking place Sunday.

After the conclusion of play Sunday, Ancient Eight squad Columbia walked out of Princeton, N.J. hoisting the championship trophy, two shots ahead of Georgetown. The next four finishers all hailed from the Ivy League, with Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Penn placing third through sixth, respectively. Brown was also in attendance.

Other school that took part in the event were Rollins College, Delaware, and Lehigh. As hosts, Princeton fielded two squads at the tournament.

Harvard went into the tournament with a depleted lineup. Captain Anne Cheng traveled with the team and was in the original lineup, however a wrist injury kept her out of play for the weekend. It was the first tournament Cheng has missed due to injury in her career. As a result, the Crimson was only able to utilize four players on the scoring team of the five that were allowed.

Freshman Chloe Belle Hooton has also been sidelined since the opening tournament of the season with a muscle injury in her side.

Due to injuries, the Crimson was forced to call on walk on freshman Ji Hae Lee to step in and assume a place on the scoring team.

“I’m very proud of what Ji Hae Lee was able to do for us this weekend after being thrust into a challenging situation,” Harvard coach Kevin Rhoads said. “She had a tough first round, but came back pretty nicely in her second and third rounds, which helps us when we’re dealing with these injuries we haven’t had over the past few seasons.”

12 schools took part in the event overall. In its ninth place result, Harvard finished three shots behind Delaware, but 18 strokes ahead of Brown.

Round two was Harvard’s lowest score of the three, as the Crimson shot a 305 in the second half of play Saturday.

On the individual side, sophomore Michelle Xie jumped out of the gates by firing a -4 68 in round one. She never looked back, holding onto the top slot throughout the course of the tournament en route to the individual title. She finished six strokes in front of her nearest competition, represented by Jennifer Peng of Yale, Camilla Vik of Columbia, and Christina Park of Penn.

“Despite conditions not being ideal for our team, everyone was still able to rally together and individually stay on top of our games,” Xie said. “Everyone was able to focused throughout the weekend, which is a real credit to our coaching and the team chemistry we have.”

Fellow sophomore Anna Zhou finished as part of a tie for 13th out of 66 competitors in the event. Senior Nina Fairbairn ended play as part of a group of five women tied for 32nd.

Of the top nine players on the individual leaderboard, eight of them hailed from Ivy League schools. Jacquelyn Eleey of Georgetown, who finished as part of a five-way tie for fifth place, was the only exception.

“I like to see that the other Ivy League schools are playing well at this stage of the season,” Rhoads said. “It provides an affirmation about how high the quality of competition in the league is, and just provides us with that additional incentive that each of us individually needs to keep doing our best to move forward.”

—Staff writer Jed Rothstein can be reached at jed.rothstein@thecrimson.com.