Golf Team Finishes Seventh At Yale

The Macdonald Cup might not have the same ring as The Game, but every fall Yale plays host to the Harvard men’s golf team and 11 other schools on its home turf, The Course at Yale.

The Crimson arrived in New Haven, Conn., on Saturday coming off a disappointing seventh-place finish in The McLaughlin last weekend in which it shot a team-record three-round score of 856 strokes. At the end of this weekend’s two-round tournament, Harvard was in a familiar place—seventh—after shooting a 588, one stroke more than Ivy counterpart Dartmouth and eight shots worse than the rival Bulldogs.

“We had a good start,” junior captain Tony Grillo said. “[But] golf is just like any other sport: one day can change anything. That happened [yesterday]. We’re definitely disappointed in our finish, but we have nothing to blame but ourselves.”

It could be tempting to blame The Course. Designed by USGA co-founder Charles Blair Macdonald in 1926, The Course at Yale was named the top college golf course in the country by Golfweek and was deemed the 71st-most difficult course in the world by Golf Magazine in 1988.

“A lot of emphasis is based on how hard it is around the greens,” Grillo said. “Especially when the greens are a little faster...they definitely tend to trip people up.”

The greens did not trip up freshman Theo Lederhausen. Lederhausen fired a one under par, 69, on Saturday, and on his first shot yesterday bypassed the green altogether. Teeing off on the fifth hole—a 147-yard, par three—to start the round, the freshman sunk a hole-in-one. From there, Lederhausen cruised, carding a team-best 71 on the day to finish the tournament with an even-par 140, good enough to tie for fifth place out of 74 competitors.

“We are thrilled with his play,” Grillo said of the freshman. “We are excited to see that he’s playing well. I think the most important part is he’s feeling comfortable now.”

Unfortunately for the Crimson, no one else could match Lederhausen’s success. Grillo finished second on the team and tied for 18th overall by shooting six over par (71-75). Junior Mark Pollak posted Harvard’s third-best score at 11 over par (75-76), and junior Connor Wentzell rounded out the top four with 14 over par (78-76).

Freshmen Seiji Liu and Michael Lai also competed, scoring a 155 (75-80) and 156 (78-78), respectively.

“We just couldn’t put scores together,” Grillo said. “When we had a couple low scores, we had some high scores we had to take.”

Although the Crimson led both Dartmouth and Yale after the first round, both the Big Green and the Bulldogs took advantage of Harvard’s inconsistency and edged past the Crimson on the leaderboard.

Not helping matters, cold weather, high winds, and difficult pin placements made Harvard especially susceptible to the rallying Ivies.

“It was extremely cold weather—around high 40s and low 50s for most of the day,” Liu said. “The wind was about 20 miles an hour...Add [that] on to tough pin positions and an already wet and drenched course.”

Dartmouth’s Sunday score of 292 gave the Big Green 587 strokes on the tournament and a share of fifth place. Yale, led by sophomore Bradley Kushner’s three over par, collectively shot a 580, 20 over par—good for second place.

“That’s [the Bulldogs’] home course,” Liu said. “So they had a major advantage.”

“Yale has beaten us the last couple times out. Of course we’re gunning for them,” Grillo said. ”As far as Dartmouth beating us, we just had a bad day [yesterday]. We’d like to consider ourselves better than that team.”

Topping the Bulldogs for first place in The Macdonald Cup was St. John’s. The Red Storm dominated the competition, shooting five over par as a team and winning by 15 strokes. St. John’s players posted four of the top nine individual scores. The Bulldogs, Binghamton, Central Connecticut, and Sacred Heart rounded out the top five.

“We have to piece together stronger rounds from all five of us on the same days,” Liu said.

“Two seventh-place finishes in [The McLaughlin and The Macdonald Cup] is not bad. It’s nothing to be disappointed and hang our heads about,” Grillo said. “But at the same time, we’re looking to start winning.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. Walsh can be reached at twalsh@fas.harvard.edu.