Dartmouth's men's and women's golf teams traveled to New Jersey this past weekend to compete in the Ivy League golf championships.
The men's team played at the Galloway National Golf Club in Absecon, N.J., where it finished in a disappointing seventh place out of eight teams. The women's team finished toward the bottom of the pack at the Atlantic City Golf Club in Atlantic City, N.J., coming in sixth out of the seven-team field.
The low scorer for the men's squad was captain Jamie Wallace '08, who shot an 80-73-79-232 over the three rounds of the tournament. His score was 19 over par on the par-71 course and gave him a tie for 15th place.
Wallace finished a total of 14 shots off the lead and said he feels he could have had a better performance.
"I had a good second round but the first and third were not even close to good," Wallace said. "I probably should have been lower in the second round too, but I gave some strokes away by missing short putts."
High scores were the norm for the tournament, with only four individual rounds playing under par and only three players finishing fewer than 10 strokes over par.
Wallace noted that, unlike past tournaments this season, the course rather than the weather was a main contributing factor for the high scores across the tournament.
"Galloway National is a great golf course; and while there are some birdie holes, overall it is a difficult course," Wallace said. "The scores showed the difficulty. Sunday was especially tough, as they seemed to choose the hardest pin position on each green."
Davis Mullany '11, playing with an injured wrist, finished with the second best three-round score for the Big Green, with a 78-80-77-235. Rob Henley '09 shot a strong round of 76, five over par in the first round, but the next two rounds proved more difficult as he finished the tournament with a score of 76-82-78-236.
As a team, Dartmouth fared much better on Sunday than it did on Saturday, finishing with the second lowest team score of the day, behind only Columbia, the eventual winner.
However, the strong third round scores were not enough to compensate for the poor performance in the two rounds on Saturday, which the team knew going into the day.
"We put ourselves in a position after the first two rounds that we couldn't really come back from," Henley said. "Our low round for the tournament was a 73, which was not good at all for a 54-hole tournament."
Although he was disappointed by the performance, Wallace suggested that the team has more talent than it displayed in the tournament.
"Nobody played well for us this weekend," Wallace said. "We all threw away some shots and just didn't quite have our best games. It was not for lack of effort -- you just can't always play golf well. We were much better than we played this spring season."
The men's team will compete at the University of Rhode Island's Northeast Collegiate Invitational this Friday at the Green Valley Country Club in Portsmouth, R.I., the final competition of the spring season.
For the women's team, the weekend was also disappointing -- the team finished its season with a second-to-last place finish at the Ivy League championship in Atlantic City.
The low scorer of the weekend for the Big Green was Tory Sheppard '09, who finished the tournament at 25 over par, with a score of 80-79-82-241, good enough for 24th place overall.
"I am happy with my performance this weekend," Sheppard said. "I felt confident with my swing, and I capitalized on birdie opportunities. The greens rolled well so putts were falling. My putting definitely helped me to score well this weekend."
As was the case at the men's tournament, the course proved quite difficult and scores ballooned as a result.
There were only five rounds under par at the women's tournament, two of which were carded by the eventual tournament winner, Princeton junior Susannah Aboff.
Aboff set an Ivy record with her first round score of 65, seven shots under par. She posted 70 on Saturday in the second round before finishing her round Sunday at even-par 72. Her total score of nine under-par, 207, was 11 shots better than her closest competitor, Harvard junior Emily Balmert.
It was the seventh time in the 12-year history of the Ivy League women's championship that a golfer from Princeton won the individual event.
Libby Wegener '08 finished her Ivy League career with her best round of the season, shooting 82-83-84-249, to finish 28th. Lauren Strickler '09 shot an 84-87-80-251 and captain Elizabeth Dupuy '08 fought through an injured back to round out the scoring with an 84-88-83-255.
The Ivy tournament was the last event this spring for the women's team.
"We're losing a couple of seniors this year, but we have three freshmen coming in and a solid core to build on," Strickler said. "I'm very excited to see where the team can get to next year."
