M., W. Golf Struggle in '98-'99

Perhaps Harvard links mastery has to wait until after graduation when multi million dollar deals hinge on shooting par.

With a team composed chiefly of a freshman and four sophomores against just one senior, the Harvard men's golf team struggled mightily this season. Its female counterparts fared even worse.

For the men, the fall golf season opened in pasture-plentiful Hanover, N.H. for the Dartmouth Invitational from Sept. 26-27. In a trend that would continue throughout the season, inconsistent play by the team produced a tenth place finish out of a field of 16.

The inability to match opening round success followed the Crimson to the Toski Invitational the next week, where a 303 first day combined score rose to 319, as the team fell from sixth to ninth place.

While most of its finishes hovered around tenth place, Harvard posted its best numbers at the Army Invitational on Oct. 10-11 where it ended in seventh.

The Crimson appeared to improve slowly every week through the fall season. Keying Harvard's asymptotic rise was captain Doug MacBean along with sophomores Kaj Vazzales, Matthew Dost, Jack Lynch, Rob Erikson--a transfer--and freshman Andrew Malcolm.

"The team is strong," MacBean said. "Four of our guys are freshmen and sophomores so we have a lot to look forward to."

Harvard offered a glimpse at its true potential in the NEIGA Tournament where it finished a very respectable ninth out of a competitive field of 47.

Battling 25 mph winds, Dost and Vazzales led the team with combined scores of 156, while MacBean was one stroke back at 157 (76, 82).

Unfortunately, it never came together for the Crimson in the spring, as it always languished towards the back of the pack in the Ivy League.

Harvard placed well behind the Elis at the Yale Spring Invitational April 10-11, placing eighth of 27, in what would prove its best outing of the spring.

The following weekend brought the Ivy League Championships and more mediocrity. The Crimson ended the tournament a full 24 strokes behind the champions, Columbia, taking sixth in the Ivy.

A weekend off did nothing to stem Harvard's struggling. It limped into twelfth place at the New England Division One Championships, and then finished the year grabbing seventh out of 14 at Army.

In West Point, almost every Crimson player added strokes in consecutive rounds, and the team did not wait until the final results were posted to flee from the cadets.

"The season did end on a bad note," Malcolm said. "But we are a very young team, and we're gaining experience. We're still looking forward to next year."

While the men's golf team had a couple of bright moments, the women could claim just two finishes in the top half of its field.

Both came in the spring, when it took fifth at the Boston College Invitational, the season opener on April 10-11. The Crimson also grabbed second place honors at the Massachusetts Intercollegiate Championships--in a field of five.

Aside from that, the results looked pretty bleak for the Crimson.

In the fall, Harvard finished 12th of 14 at the Dartmouth Invitational and followed that with a 14th of 15 finish in New Haven.

Autumn ended at the ECAC Championships in Hartford. Two consecutive combined scores of 398 spelled 18th place for the Crimson.

The long Blue Fox Run course in Connecticut posed particular difficulties as it forced the Harvard players to overly on its short game.

While the golf team's play did warm a little with the weather, a disappointing performance at the Ivy League Championships came square in the middle of the Crimson's two decent outings.

Harvard finished in fifth place in the Ivy, a poor outcome considering only five Ancient Eight schools field women's golf teams. Sophomore Maureen Shannon posted the best combined score for Harvard with a 177 and the best round at 87--a full sixteen strokes above par.

The Northeast Championships marked the end of the season for the Crimson, and the struggling continued as the team ended up in 10th place of 13.