1996
Sports Statistics
Record: 0-2
Coach: Bob Leonard
Key Players: Co-captain Luis Sanchez and Ed Boyda, Senior Darren Kilfara; Sophomore Craig MacDonald
1997
In the end, we had Luis Sanchez. Thank goodness, for everyone else was only so much roster fodder.
Our Guatemalan co-captain on the Harvard golf team ends the year ranked as the eighth-best collegiate golfer in New England. He finishes as the second-strongest force in Harvard golf; once again, the clearest dominator was the weather, although this year Mother Nature gave us even more trouble than she has in recent memory.
Despite a relatively mild winter, we lost the prestigious New England Championships to the monsoons back in October, then had two 36-hole days reduced to 18 holes in the spring. And when the elements let us play, by and large, our performances were as patchy as the average New England February afternoon.
Not once did we have one of those magical tournaments where everyone came together and clicked to post a sub-305 or sub-300 team one-round score. We all played well in spots; I, a senior, started the year by leading the team with a pair of 76s at the UNH Invitational, where we finished in ninth place out of 13 teams. Too, sophomore Doug MacBean promised much with his 74-79 at UNH, but as happened with me, this early rush of form was for Doug only a sort of false dawn.
We proceeded to then qualify for the ECAC Championships, never a mean feat, but only Luis put two decent rounds together. His 77-77 tied him for 10th overall--but our team 351 in the second round was a number to erase. My 88 in round two was our second-best number--the other players' identities and scores are being withheld to protect the innocent.
The cancellation of our big fall trip to New Seabury down on the Cape, host of the NEIGA's, was no minimal loss. Thus did we go into our usual winter hibernation a touch early, meaning the rust to be scraped off of our swings would only be that much thicker.
Spring break comes, and a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of fun and sun; our trip to Acapulco and Mexico City did not disappoint, even though I had my wallet stolen on a Mexico City subway platform and even though our form--with the key exception of senior co-captain Ed Boyda--was unexceptional. But thereafter, the season turns back into the wind and rain of Massachusetts, and once more we were back to playing golf in conditions that begged for galoshes and thermals, not softspikes and shorts.
Our first two spring rounds were played at Yale, a golf course eliciting a love-hate relationship even at the best of times. Take the bizarre case of sophomore Craig MacDonald: Com- But in the Yale Invitational, on the same golf course a week later, MacDonald's putting deserted him and he ballooned to a number 12 shots worse! Still, we finished sixth out of 15 at Yale, paced by junior Andy Rourke's 80. Read more in Sports
