The women's golf team opened its fall season on a bright note at the Dartmouth Invitational despite the grey skies and rain in Hanover last weekend.
Led by senior captain Meredith Johnson's '98 collegiate career best round of 79 on Saturday, the team's score of 671 gave them a 4th place finish in a field of 14 teams in the tournament held at the Hanover Country Club.
Johnson shot 83 on Sunday to bring her 36-hole total to 162, good for eighth place overall. Samantha Sommers '99 (81-84) and Lauren Epstein '00 (85-80) each fired a respectable 165.
Princeton took top team honors behind the play of Laura Gilmore and Julia Allison. Gilmore won the meet with a (72-78) 150, finishing a stroke ahead of teammate Allison whose scores of 78 and 73 totaled 151. The Princeton team total was 632. Yale scored 641, and Hartford combined for 651.
The linksters started the day in shorts and t-shirts, but about an hour before tee time the downpour began. The rain let up just as the women began play and held off for another hour of dry action. Then suddenly the temperature dropped about 15 degrees, and the wind became very gusty, wreaking havoc on the course.
"I felt sorry for the teams down in the gully, holes 11 through 14, at that time" said Coach Izzy Johnson. "They were hitting it blindly out of the fog down there."
The coach complimented the play of her six-person team, which she called "not very deep, but good". Johnson noted that she has been especially impressed with the progress of Cara Mathews '99, who just joined the team last spring.
"She has only played in three events and has really, really improved," Johnson said. "She is a great athlete and her swing is really solid."
"In the spring, I knew we were graduating a lot of seniors and that there weren't many recruits coming in so I knew that they would be counting on me to play," Mathews said. "I really focused on my game during interim and hoped that would carry over into the match. I wasn't even expecting them to use my score."
Epstein shared her coach's enthusiasm about the strength of the team as she considered the strong competition from Princeton, Yale and Hartford.
"I think we have it in us to beat them," she said.
Johnson is looking forward to the competition as well. The team travels to New Haven on Friday to take on many of the same teams in the Yale Invitational, and Johnson said that the mental aspect of golfing will play a big part in her plan of attack for the weekend.
"I'm just going to concentrate on playing my game," she said. "I know I've put a lot into it so now I have a little more confidence."
Mathews said trying to build on last week's performance will be hard.
"I read somewhere that Yale has the second-ranked college course in the country, so I'm a little nervous about going there to play. It's an opportunity though to keep plyaing well and build on last weekend's performance."
Coach Johnson agreed, pointing out that Yale's course will take a lot of patience on the part of her team.
"They'll have to have their thinking caps on."
