The women's golf team traveled to the Mount Holyoke Invitational last Saturday and returned with a second place finish, its best since the spring of 1993.
Led by Samantha Sommers '99, who shot rounds of 80 and 82 (162) to finish second behind Boston College's Katie Shields (77-83--160), the team finished one stroke out of first place. Boston College's two-round score of 683 topped the Big Green's 684.
Supporting Sommers with solid play were Joanna Whitley '97 (87-86--173) and Lauren Epstein '00 (90-84--174).
Harvard finished third. Following the Crimson were Mt. Holyoke, New Hampshire, Brown, Bryant, Amherst and Boston University.
Last year at the Mount Holyoke Invitational each of the women competing had a personal best of some sort. No doubt a repeat performance was on the minds of the upperclassmen as they traveled to the meet.
"On the van ride down we all talked about how this was the tournament for the team to win," Sommers said. "Everyone played well the first day at Yale and were extremely disappointed on the second day. We all felt this week we could put two good rounds together."
Unfortunately a win was not in the cards for the Big Green.
"We didn't play as well as we could have, and BC played very well," Epstein said. "If we had played well, it probably wouldn't have been close."
Despite her second place individual finish, Sommers still felt badly about losing.
"It is so hard to finish second by only one shot because you keep blaming yourself for that missed putt or double bogey you took," Sommers said.
The Mount Holyoke course was built in the 1930s, specifically for the women's golf team. It is a par 72, and has an above-average slope rating. Slope is another way used to compare one course to another.
"Because the course was designed for women, all of the hazards are placed where you are going to hit the ball," Whitley said. "It has very small greens and a lot of trees that you don't think will be a problem, but they are."
Epstein said she had trouble with the greens as well because they were so hard to judge.
"There was virtually no way to stop your ball from rolling off the back of the green," she said. "Because most of the greens sloped from back to front it made chipping back onto the greens extremely difficult."
Next week the women are off, giving them an extra week to prepare for the ECAC championships at St. Francis on October 19-20.
