Radtke Leads M. Linksters to Third Place at Div. I Tourney

The frost that has clung to the Harvard men's golf team for the last two months finally began to thaw this weekend.

The Crimson posted its best finish of the spring season, finishing third in a field of 17 teams at the Division I Tournament at The Country Club of Fairfield (par 70) in Fairfield, Connecticut. The tournament was played in a stroke-play format in which the best four-out-of-five scores were counted.

Harvard, which tied for third with Brown, shot 623 and nearly exacted some revenge on a second-place Yale squad (621), which had won the Ivy Championships the previous weekend.

URI captured the top spot with a total of 616. The Rams' fourth player scored an opening-round 73, which highlighted their superior talent and depth.

Harvard's top three golfers, senior co-captain Joel Radtke, senior co-captain Jun Choo and junior Luis Sanchez all posted topten scores.

Fresh off his All-Ivy performance at the League Championships, Radtke shot 72-76 over the two-day tournament, earning him another second-place finish.

"I think I outplayed the guy who won," Radtke said. "In the last two weeks I think I've established myself as one of the premier players [in New England]."

"[In the first round] I had enough game for a 67," added Radtke, who finished the opening round with a 72. "It was a shot here or there. I thought, 'I'm hitting the ball well enough to win the tournament."

Tied for first place after the first round, Radtke played an aggressive style of golf over the final 18 holes. Playing without a leader board to dictate strategy (there are no leader boards in college golf), the co-captain's attacking style cost him on the 17th hole. Trying to make birdie, Radtke hit his drive into the water and took a penalty, a shot which probably cost him the tournament.

"I had gone out the entire round of golf and had played really aggressive golf," Radtke said. "I was stepping up there trying to make birdie. In retrospect, maybe I would have made a different play."

Choo, who has struggled with his game all spring, put together a pair of consistent rounds, firing a 75-77 on the weekend. Perhaps the most talented player on the team, Choo showed signs of emerging from his slump last weekend by posting a 76 on his final round.

"We were pleased with the fact that he came through this week," Sanchez said of Choo's fifth-place finish.

"[Choo] hit the ball well and probably could have done better than what he did," Radtke added. "He wanted to end on a high note."

Sanchez, one of the Crimson's most reliable players and an All-Ivy golfer, shot 75-78, good for tenth place.

But while Harvard's top three golfers performed admirably in windy conditions, the Crimson had to absorb an opening-round 83 and a final-round 87--scores which effectively eliminated Harvard from any title hopes.

"Alex [Gonzalez] and Ed [Boyda] are very good players," Radtke said. "The wind just hurt them. If you aren't confident with your swing it can turn a 75 into an 85."

Still, for the first time all spring, Harvard's top three golfers were able to put their games together at the same time.

"We felt we were going to come through in the tournament," Sanchez said. "We played much better. It seems to happen that the further we go into the spring season the more our game starts to come back."

"We had three guys in the top ten," Radtke said. "We have a lot of quality at the top of our team."

The Crimson finishes its season with a match against Dartmouth and Brown in which the top eight players compete in a match-play format. DIVISION I TOURNAMENT 1. URI  616 2. Yale  621 3. HARVARD  623.5 3. Brown  623.5 5. Central Connecticut  627 5. UNH  627 7. Providence  628 8. Hartford  636 9. Dartmouth  637 10. Boston College  639