Golf Team To Tee-off in Easterns; Harvard Seen as Threat for Title

There is only one place the varsity golf team wants to go this year--Albuquerque, New Mexico, and there's only one way to get there-through Princeton, New Jersey.

Albuquerque is the site of the 1968 National Golf Championships. This Saturday Princeton hosts the Eastern Championships, in which Harvard must place better than fourth to be invited to the NCAA meet.

After a solid 11-2 match record, this looks like the Crimson's year. Last year Harvard had a 9-4 record and finished fifth at the Easterns.

But there is one slight obstacle to surmount before the team can pack their bags, and that is almost every golf team on the East coast.

Penn State, who won last year, is far and away the favorite in the Eastern Competition. Harvard rates with Yale, Princeton, Navy, and Cornell as top threats to upset them.

Princeton will have the edge on everyone else because of the home course advantage, but aside from that everyone will line up even at the first tee.

Junior Bruce LoPucki and senior captain Bo Keefe will be out to improve on their eighth and tenth place finishes last year.

Behind them, Tommy Wynne and Paul Oldfield will provide a solid core of experience for Harvard. Three new sophomores--Yank Heisler, Jack Purdy, and Joe Tibbetts--who have all flashed brilliantly through the regular match-play season--will be unknown factors for the other teams to worry about.

Heisler and Purdy carry the best winning percentages on the team. Tibbetts, who normally plays seventh man, tied number one man Bo Keefe for medal honors in the Greater Boston Championships three weeks ago.

Harvard stands in the middle of the top competitors. In the first match of the season the Crimson beat Navy, 4-3, and downed Cornell, 5-2, just two weeks ago. But the golfers have also lost heart-breakers to Penn in an upset and just yesterday to Yale under poor course conditions. They have not yet faced Princeton in match play.