The Harvard varsity golf team fired five sub-80 rounds in the Ivy League championships this Saturday, but a birdie blitzkrieg by Princeton. Yale and Dartmouth left the Crimson well back in the pack in sixth place, 30 shots away from victory.
Princeton ran away from the strong, seven-team field landing three players in the top four spots to capture the team title with 596. Tiger Tim Dodson took medalist honors with a 36-hole total of 141, one over par on Dartmouth's short, but narrow. Hanover Country Club course, while teammate Brian Miller finished second with 145.
Yale took second place with a 613, followed closely by Dartmouth (614) and Pennsylvania (616). Columbia (624) edged out Harvard (626) for fifth place, while Brown finished last with 653.
Glenn Alexander led the Crimson with a 151, finishing seventh overall to earn All-Ivy status. The long-driving Alexander played well from tee to green most of the day, but an inconsistent short game cost the sophomore a shot a medalist.
Co-captain Jim Dales placed second for the Crimson with a "less-than-consistent" 158 performance. Slow greens and bad breaks led Dales to a disastrous 87 in the morning round, but he emerged from lunch to fire a one-over-par 71, the lowest round posted all afternoon and his personal best in the competition.
"Everything just went wrong in the morning," Dales said yesterday, "so I changed putters, changed clothes, changed balls--I mean I changed everything, and it worked."
Dales birdied six of the final 18 holes, including two of the last three, but a ball out of bounds and three three-putt greens destroyed his chances of breaking par.
Senior Ron Himelman tied Dales at 158, while sophomore Chip Raffi carded a 159. Himelman hit nearly every green in regulation, but failed to can a single putt over five feet on the bumpy Hanover greens.
"It's just work out there when you hit eight greens in nine holes and still finish two over," Himelman noted following the match. "If you can't drain the putts, there's no way to score."
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