Men's Golf 12th at Philadelphia Big 5 Invitational
By Mark Pollak '12
This weekend the Harvard Men's Golf team traveled south to compete in the Philadelphia Big 5 Invitational. The tournament featured many top schools from the east coast and pitted Harvard against six of its Ivy League rivals. The competition was held at the historic Plymouth Country Club in the northwest suburbs of Philadelphia.
Designed in 1912 by William S. Flynn, the course provides a formidable challenge to golfers looking to take advantage of its relatively short yardage. At 6600 yards, the par 70 layout appears inviting on the scorecard, but is protected by numerous doglegs, tree lined fairways and small, undulating greens. The tricky layout forces players to be constantly on their toes and penalizes those who get too greedy. With this in mind, the Crimson drafted a game plan and hoped to intelligently attack the golf course over the weekend.
Saturday morning the men woke up to ideal golf conditions. A strong high-pressure system perched itself over the area and produced record high temperatures across the northeast. The unusual weather system treated tournament participants to a summery, 80-degree day. The Crimson marched on to the course hoping to take advantage of these conditions and get off to a strong start for the weekend. Coming off of consecutive tournaments in which he had a hole-in-one, senior captain Antonio Grillo '12 led the team with a solid 71 to put himself in a tie for 7th place. Sophomores Seiji Liu '14 and Michael Lai '14 followed Grillo's strong play with 74 and 75, respectively. Senior Mark Pollak '12 was unable to recover from a bumpy start and finished with 78. Sophomore Theo Lederhausen '14 rounded out the Crimson with an 83. Harvard's team total of 298 placed them in a tie 7th behind Ivy League rivals Dartmouth and Penn.
The fabulous weather of Saturday continued into Sunday, allowing for solid play to be rewarded with good scores. Tony Grillo was able to fight off a rough start but unable to keep his hole-in-one streak going and finished his second round with a 77. His solid play for the tournament earned him 25th place overall. Mark Pollak recovered nicely from his first round woes with a 72. Seiji Liu and Theodore Lederhausen contributed with 76 and 78, respectively. Michael Lai rounded out the Crimson with an 80. On a perfect day, Harvard's stumble on the course was reflected in their position on the leaderboard. The second round total of 303 contributed to a tournament total of 601 and dropped the Crimson to 12th place for the tournament. On a positive note, the Crimson edged out Yale, Cornell, Brown, and Princeton. However, they were unable to keep up with the strong play shown by Penn and, tournament champion, Dartmouth.
The Crimson will be traveling to Evanston, Illinois next weekend to finish out their fall season at Northwestern's Windon Classic.
Yardage: 6600 6600 Daily Leader Both
Fin Team Scores
1 Dartmouth College 286 292 578 +18
2 Campbell University 292 292 584 +24
3 Furman University 299 287 586 +26
T 4 Pennsylvania, U. of 290 297 587 +27
T 4 St. John's Univ. 297 290 587 +27
6 Binghamton Univ. 299 295 594 +34
7 Francis Marion U. 302 293 595 +35
T 8 Seton Hall Univ. 304 292 596 +36
T 8 Temple University 294 302 596 +36
10 U.S. Naval Academy 297 301 598 +38
11 Villanova University 298 301 599 +39
12 Harvard University 298 303 601 +41
T 13 Fordham University 310 292 602 +42
T 13 Princeton University 300 302 602 +42
T 15 Cornell University 300 304 604 +44
T 15 Yale University 300 304 604 +44
17 Towson University 310 295 605 +45
18 George Mason Univ. 304 304 608 +48
19 Drexel University 315 309 624 +64
20 La Salle University 314 320 634 +74
21 Saint Joseph's Univ. 317 325 642 +82
22 Brown University 326 322 648 +88
Fin Name School Scores
T 25 Tony Grillo Harvard 71 77 148 +8
T 38 Mark Pollak Harvard 78 72 150 +10
T 38 Seiji Liu Harvard 74 76 150 +10
T 66 Michael Lai Harvard 75 80 155 +15
T 97 Theodore Lederhausen Harvard 83 78 161 +21
