The Crimson golfers registered only one sub-80 round yesterday at the toesselated Hanover Country Club in Hanover, N.H., to finish a dismal fifth in the ECAC qualifying tournament, an event that the linksters won last year.

Only the top two qualifiers are invited to the ECAC tournament, so the Harvard squad will be in Cambridge when the premier event of the fall golf season is played at the Seven Oaks Golf Club in Colgate, N.Y., next weekend.

The only ray of light for the linksmen was a scintillating three-over par round of 73 by Spence Fitzgibbons, which qualifies him for the ECAC shindig on an individual basis. Fitzgibbons birdied the last hole, but Dartmouth's Joe Henley closed out with an eagle to take medalist honors with a 72. Fitzgibbons hit 14 greens in regulation, his only faux pas coming on the twelfth green, which he four-putted. anything close to their mid-season form, as

The rest of the linksters never displayed anything close to their midseason form, as Alex Vik carded an 80 and Glenn Alexander and 84. Chris Ball and George Arnold both shot 85, as the former took harrowing penstrokes on the par-five fifteenth and the latter flailed to an 11 on the eleventh.

At only 6000 yards, the Hanover Country Club presents the same problem to a golfer as the one faced by an artist who prefers to paint in bold strokes but is forced to execute a miniature.

After finishing 16 strokes behind first-place Dartmouth, the disheartened coach Bob Donovan said, "It's really a disgraceful performance. Maybe we were a little over-confident, and maybe I'm to blame, because I thought we were a shooin. It's going to be a very long and bitter winter after today."