"I don't have the most beautiful swing on the team," said freshman golfer Gene Purdy after firing a pacesetting 75 over the Concord Country Club, "It's like a slap shot, if you really want to know."

Purdy, who broke into the varsity hockey lineup this season, proved the sleeper in the linksters' win over Amherst and Tufts yesterday in the Crimson's opening dual match. The squad finished with a composite score of 386, good enough to whomp the Lord Jeffs by 24 strokes, while Tufts straggled in with a 415.

Harvard's number one player Alex Vik carded a blazing 35 over the back nine to finish five over par along with captain Scott McNealy, one stroke behind Purdy.

Like Purdy, McNealy and Vik have been known to brandish Northland hockey sticks besides their acushnet blades. Vik made his all-City hockey team as a Swedish school boy before his career was cut short when his family moved to the Canary Islands.

"It took me a couple holes to get into the swing of competition again," said McNealy, but he finished by hitting every green in regulation on the back nine. "It was probably the best nine holes I ever played from tee to green," he added.

Vik blew up on the front nine with a 41 before the clubhouse turn. He strung together bogeys at the start and smothered a drive into the tree-canopied rough along the seventh. He fluffed his second shot into a bunker and knocked his chip over the green for a double bogey. Vik turned things around from the twelfth hole on, after exploding from a sand to within three feet of the pin.

Two Seed

Number two seed Spense Fitzgibbons ballooned to a disappointing 81 but fellow freshman Ron Himmelman finished with a 78. "These young guys are just really good golfers," says McNealy. The linksmen could conceivably boast a starting lineup of five freshmen and two sophomores.

Purdy's stellar outing left his teammates in raptures. "He's a strong kid. He really crushes the ball," McNealy says. "He's really improving fast." Purdy summed up by saying, "I felt like I was in a real groove today. I hadn't been playing very well last week so I felt I was due."