Men's Golf Takes Fourth Place at Temple Invitational

Led by the sixth-and 10th-place performances of freshmen Robert Deng and Daniel De La Garza, the Harvard men's golf team tied for fourth at the Temple Invitational in Huntingdon Valley, Pa.

The Crimson finished the first round in second place at 6-over par and only four shots back, but dropped to fourth after shooting a 16-over 296 on Sunday.

“I’m proud of us for getting in contention after the first day,” Deng said. “I think the more times [we’re] in contention, the more times [we] get to experience that pressure of being right there.”

Still in second place with the last five holes to play, the Crimson stumbled to the finish. Harvard shot 10 strokes over par on those final holes to finish at 22-over par, 20 strokes behind first-place Hartford.

De La Garza, who shot the Crimson’s only subpar round of the weekend with a first-round 69 on the par 70, 6,638-yard Philmont Country Club course, was one of the Harvard golfers who struggled through the end of the back nine on Sunday. He shot 3-over par on his final three holes.

“The last few holes, especially the 16th and 17th, were challenging,” De La Garza said. “On 16, you had to hit a very good tee shot, and 17 was a par three where we didn’t really know what the wind was doing, so it was hard to know what [club] to hit.”

None of the other 92 golfers came close to challenging Hartford's Evan Russell for the individual title. Russell overcame a double-bogey on Saturday and a bogey on Sunday at the 16th hole to shoot a 62-68, eight strokes ahead of the pack. He had 14 birdies on the weekend, including ten on Saturday. In the four tournaments he has appeared in this season, Russell now has two victories and a second-place finish.

Russell and teammate Anthony Vecchiarelli were the only competitors to shoot both rounds under par, leading the Hawks to a 2-over par team result. Led by Dylan Crowley's third-place finish at even-par 140, St. John's finished in second with a team score of 577, while the Crimson rounded out the podium at 582.

The next highest Ivy League team was the Penn at 29-over, with Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth and Brown further down the leaderboard.

Harvard bounced back nicely after coming in 15th out of 16 teams at the Windon Memorial three weeks ago.  This weekend, Deng and De La Garza led the way with scores of 143 and 144 respectively, and every Crimson golfer finished in the top 40 out of 93.

“[Saturday], I felt really good and hit many quality iron shots,” De La Garza said. “My putting was not great, but I was able to hang in there around par and had a good finish. [Sunday] was a completely opposite round—I didn’t hit the ball very well, but was able to putt well.”

While De La Garza saw his score rise on day two, Deng managed to work his way to a solid 1-over par second round after posting a 2-over on Saturday.

“I came into the round feeling positive about my game knowing I could go pretty low [with my score],” Deng said. “I got a couple of bad breaks here and there and found myself at 3-over par through seven [holes], but I was able to stage somewhat of a charge coming back, but near the end a couple of mistakes came back.”

For the rest of the team, the second round was not nearly as strong as the first. Sophomore Rohan Ramnath was consistent with 15 pars on Saturday, but had six bogeys and a double-bogey on Sunday to finish the tournament at 9-over par. Classmate Un Cho shot a 72 in the first round but had no birdies in the second to finish at 8-over 148.

Like the rest of the Crimson, freshman Kendrick Vinar struggled on holes 16 through 18 in both rounds, posting a 4-over par on those three holes. Other than those, though, he managed a 3-over mark and finished at 7-over par for the weekend.

“As a whole, we gave it our best effort this weekend, which is really all we can ask of ourselves,” Deng said. “As we gain more experience, we start to get more clutch, and that’s what we really need right now. At the same time, there’s room for improvement, and fortunately we have next week at the Ivy League Match Play to improve.”