“It was difficult in a lot of ways,” Klein acknowledged. “That being said, I still think we could have played better as a team.”

“We were certainly hoping to get out to a better start to the spring season than we did,” Malcolm added.

This weekend, the men will have a chance to recover when they hit the links at the New England Division 1 Championships in Providence, R.I.

Women

Sophomore Merry Chiampa, one of the elder stateswomen on Harvard’s extremely young squad, returned from a one-year hiatus and hardly missed a beat on Saturday, shooting a 77 to put herself in a three-way tie for first. Chiampa’s performance also staked the team to second place at the end of the first day.

However, Chiampa struggled slightly with her short game on Sunday as an 85 dropped her into fourth place.

“There’s always the temptation to get out there and compare yourself to the first day, especially if you played well,” Chiampa said. “[But] it was my first competitive tournament in a while, so I was just looking to see if I could hit the ball.”

Chiampa missed the fall season for unspecified team reasons.

The rest of the Crimson also faltered slightly on the second day of the tournament, but Harvard still eclipsed its performance last year by over forty strokes.

Behind Chiampa, classmate Elisa Schaar tied for eleventh with rounds of 86 and 84, while freshman Carrie Baizer shot 86-86-171 while still trying to break in a new set of clubs.

“It was consistent, but it wasn’t consistently good,’ Baizer said. “None of us really played as well as we would want to.”

The Crimson women will have to wait two weeks for a chance to improve on their performance, until the Ivy Championships at Trenton Country Club Apr. 20th and 21st.

Hopefully, with the lower latitude and later date, the weather will have warmed up significantly by then. If not, the 36 holes each woman will play on the first day of the championships could prove even more uncomfortable than those of this past weekend.