Harvard Golf

The team doesn't ride around in golf carts sipping martinis between tees.

Craig Stadler may have done more than win the PGA Masters last week. The beer-bellied hurler of eight-irons and unprintable expressions of disgust may have jolted golf loose from its venerable "clean sport" image Golfers everywhere, from the pros to the caddy camps, have had to cope with sneers from aficionados of other sports, who believe playing golf requires a minimum of effort and talent and primarily a lot of inherited wealth. Stadler has shown that a less classy guy can win a major tournament, proving that golf is a game of skill, both mental and physical, and not confined to rich men's playgrounds as the popular impression suggests.

The Harvard golf team-has to endure its share of comments about the sport, but on the whole it receive the respect due a team which has captured four Greater Boston Championships in the last five years and regularly beaten most of its Ivy opponents as well Co-captain Carroll Lowenstein '82 takes some ribbing from Equipment Manager Chet Stone who says he can't believe the team "has to go out and play golf every day. "But the Level II team undergoes he same rigors of daily training and weekly competition as any other varsity.

The team makes an annual trip south during spring break, leaving the frozen fairways of its home course at The Country Club in Brookline for warmer, greener conditions. Team members usually generate enough money to pay about half of their yearly expenses through fundraising, while the athletic department budget covers the other half. This year's squad, which coach Dick Crosby describes as "a young team," traveled down to Sawgrass near Jacksonville. Florida, where they polished their games in preparation for spring matches against Ivy, local and NCAA Division I competition.

Early results show the Crimson linksters starting off decently, despite the snowy meteorological setback of April 10 which has affected every spring team. The team played to a second-place finish in the Greater Boston Championships last Tuesday, highlighted by first and fourth place finishes by Lowenstein and Jim Fearon. Last Thursday they met William and Holy Cross at Williams, then traveled to New Haven for a rescheduled trimeet against Princeton and Yale on Friday. The rest of the weekend promises more pressurized playing time, since Yale is also hosting the Ivy League Championships on its home course.

The Tigers have proved themselves Harvard's most formidable Ivy opponent over the past few seasons, and should again provide for major obstacle at a Crimson victory in both tournaments. But Crosby predicts a top-flight showing by freshmen Chet Nastala and Ted Marcis, who both impressed him in the GBCs with strong second rounds on an unfamiliar Concord Country Club course. "We have a good chance to win the Ivies," he says.

The most demanding aspect of the game may well be its unpredictable nature. For some players, this means frustration. But others, such as Lowenstein, view it as a challenge. "You can never have a perfect round," he points out, calling golf the kind of game where "you need to think of a lot more--you have 200 yards to consider the water, the woods and to try and figure out what you did wrong."

Teammate Steve Baker calls golf "a nasty combination of concentration and physical ability." Baker, who began playing golf on a converted cow pasture renamed Rolling Acres near his New London. Ohio, hometown, thinks the demands on a Harvard golfer make it less than idyllic. Carrying your own clubs, which can weigh 30 pounds or more, for 18 to 36 holes is a "mini-marathon," for anyone he says. The team doesn't ride around in golf carts sipping martinis between tees. They also play in adverse conditions. "At home," Baker remarks, "you wouldn't think of going out on the golf course when it's 40 degrees and raining," but at Harvard, they do.

Baker, Crosby and Lowenstein all agree that golf is not restricted to any elite class in America. "That may have been true 50 years ago, but not any more," Crosby asserts. Baker, who has played on both public and private courses, says "the surroundings are secondary--the golf is the main thing." The Ohio golf leagues are proof that it is "a working man's sport--definitely not elite," he says, calling it the kind of game where one packs a few beers into the golfbag and heads, shirtless, off into the sunset.

Crosby, who doubles as assistant director of the Massachusetts Golf Association, claims the majority of golfers in the state play at public courses. His offices, which look out onto Leo Martin Golf Course, arrange tournaments and set handicaps for 37,000 golfers--one of the largest groups in the country.

Team members call their sport both escapist and social. Baker says he appreciates the fact that practice, held from 1 to 6 p.m. four days a week, "is actually divorced from school." He adds that it is also "very social--you meet a lot of characters."

Golf also has its risks, although these are not as obvious as in contact sports which fling equipment and bodies back and forth under the rules of the game. Fat golfers occasionally suffer heart attacks or heat prostration out on the links, and some Florida players have been struck by lightning. During the spring trip. Baker had to hit a shot near a water hazard. As he swung at the ball, he noticed that an eight-foot alligator lay within spitting distance Obstacles like these are considered part of the game--golfers don't give up and go home just because a shot lies within the shadow of a toothy reptile.

Then of course, there is the weather. It can be golf's best aspector, in New England especially, its worst Harvard teams have played through snow, rain, ice-covered tees and hurricane-force winds in their New England-based tour.

But through it all, the Crimson linksters keep swinging away at that elusive mark known as a good round. The sport is a test of individual mettle, and performance against oneself, and can differ day to day depending on mental attitudes, timing and externalities like the weather. The team anticipates a good performance at this weekend's Ivy tournament, and is looking further ahead to capturing the NCAA regional title, scheduled for late April.