Linksters Miss ECAC Cutoff; Alexander Qualifies with a 75

The 1978 version of the Harvard golf team has a new coach and two new co-captains, but the results of yesterday's ECAC qualifying Tournament in the Dartmouth golf course in Hanover were somewhat predictable.

Old Golfers Never Die...

The Crimson linksters were well up on the leaderboard with three rounds in the 70s but still finished fifth in the tourney and consequently will be conspicuously absent from the ECAC tournament next week at the Essex Country Club. Only the top two schools qualify and yesterday Vermont finished first with Dartmouth and darkhorse MIT tying for second.

The golfers' new coach is Bob Carr, who is the assistant hockey coach during the winter months. He replaces Bob Donovan, Harvard's Director of Sports Promotions. The new captains are junior Jim Dales and Senior Spence Fitzgibbons, who bring diametrically opposed attitudes to the game. Dales has never taken a lesson while Fitzgibbons is a golfing hypochondriac who regularly consults golfing gurus around the world.

Yesterday Fitzgibbons shot a 78, Tom Edwards fired a 77 and Glenn Alexander, the longest hitter on the team, carded a five-over-par 75, which qualified him for the ECAC tourney on an individual basis.

The disappointing rounds were a pair of 83s logged by Dales and George Arnold that gave the linksters a team aggregate of 313 strokes. Dartmouth and MIT finished at 307, eight strokes behind Vermont.

Alexander's round started out inauspiciously when he double bogeyed the first hole and then three putted the third through fifth on sluggish greens. After shooting a 40 going out, he careened into the clubhouse with an even par 35 for the back nine by tucking a 155-yd. eight-iron two feet from the pin on number 17.