Dead Solid Tragic

Outlined against a grey-grey April sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. They are only aliases. Their real names are known only to Cuz Mingolla, impresario of the Pleasant Valley Country Club in Sutton, Massachusetts. These four formed the crest of the Pleasant Valley greens-keeping cyclone before which another fighting Harvard golf team was swept over the precipice at the hilly, 6,700-yard wash-board road-test masquerading as a golf links yesterday afternoon as the spectators--a wayward orienteering expedition, a Japanese agronomist and a golf-ball salesman--peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the winter-killed brown swales and hillocks of not-so-Pleasant Valley.

Harvard lost its seventh match in 20 starts through the plowing power of one of the greatest greenskeeping crews that ever churned up the turn of any putting green. Brilliant greenskeeping crews may come and go, but Cuz Mingolla's anonymous four, aided by FFA-approved gouging, plowing and seeding equipment, can take its place in front of the field.

Coach Bob Donovan of Harvard sent one of his more random squads into action, an aggressive organization that fought to the last putt around the first rim of darkness, but after Mingolla's minions had aerated all 18 greens with approximately 10,000 one-half-inch gouges to prepare for the July onslaught of Messrs. Nicklaus, Floyd, Watson, and Severiano Ballesteros, these Four Greenskeepers had ridden down everything in sight. The scoreboard told the tale: University of Connecticut--413 strokes; Holy Cross--415; Williams--415; and Harvard--420.

As T.S. Eliot was wont to note, April is the cruellest month, but with yesterday's 42-degree, 35-miles-per-hour bluster, Harvard spokesman Spence Fitzgibbons put it better: "It was a really rude day."

Senior Peter Pembroke Smith, playing at the No. 1 position with the same elan that Confederate drummer boys kept picking up the shredded flag at Gettysburg, shot what is quaintly referred to in modern golfing lexicon as an "Olds-mobile." That is, the freckle-faced Smith rolled home with an 88.

Junior Ron Himelman, despondent over an early morning report that he shot a 68 on a recent hourly, revived his spirits with a solid Group II effort on his Pleasant Valley scorecard: 87 strokes. Junior Spence Fitzgibbons, ailing under the delusion that he is the incarnation of the infamous Dr. Wadi Haddad of Terror International, died once again as he soared to what is a nice temperature in the Iraqi desert--85. Sophomore Jim Dales chattered his way through a four-putt green and an 82. Senior Dave Paxton played a near impeccable front nine, then rose to the occasion at the long par-4 tenth hole and took, in the ever-inventive golf vernacular, a "snow man." "You know what a snow man looks like," said Paxton, "One ball of snow on top of another--an 8!" Paxton shot 81. George Arnold managed an 85. Alex Vik and Glenn Alexander eschewed the carnage in favor of hourlies.