The men's and women's golf teams sagged this weekend in their second tournaments of the season, with both squads taking home disappointing results after a pair of promising season openers.
Men's golf
Following a top-five finish in its first tournament of the year, the Navy Invitational, the men's golf team floundered this weekend in its second showing. The squad shot 628 - 309 on Saturday, 319 on Sunday - at the par-72 Cornell Invitational, leading to an 11th place finish in a stormy competition.
"It was disappointing after (the Navy Invitational) and a good week of practice," said Head Coach Michael Hughes.
"Overall, it was just a poor performance from us," said co-captain JD Ardell '13. "We really didn't play well."
This past weekend was the first time any of the team members played Cornell's home course. The unfamiliar course was made more difficult by a passing storm that halted play for four hours halfway through Saturday's round.
"Inexplicably after the rain delay, we got into a funk," Hughes said. "It carried into yesterday. ... When we shoot a round like that, we're not firing on all cylinders."
Ardell and Justin Miller '15 carried the team with 157 each for the tournament. Both players had rounds in the low 70s but were unable to string together two strong rounds.
Peter Callas '14 and Jack Wilson '16 both finished the weekend at 159. Kyohei Itamura '14 was not far behind, shooting 161.
There will be little time for the Bears to reflect on their misfortune at Cornell. Both the course and the competition will test Bruno at Yale's McDonald Cup this coming weekend. The field will be full of Ivy League competitors, facing off on a course with notoriously difficult greens.
"We have more Ivy teams coming up in play," Ardell said. "We're tailoring practice this week to fixing the mistakes from this past weekend and preparing for the course we're seeing this weekend."
"Our putting was really not up to snuff this past weekend," Hughes said. "The greens (at Yale) are very difficult too. ... We'll be at Metacomet Country Club this week to work on a day of putting and our short game."
The Bears said they hope their play at Cornell will prove to be an outlier.
"This was one hiccup - it was a wake-up call for all of us," Ardell said.
"We're going to learn from what we did well and what we did badly," Miller said. "We're going to model this week more so like the week before Navy as opposed to before Cornell."
"Every team goes through these problems, but we need to suck it up and go through them," Hughes said. "If you're going to be lauded and praised for all the good things, you need to accept the criticism as well."
Women's golf
The women's golf team rode a wave of great play into the first day of the Yale Women's Fall Intercollegiate, but finished the tournament in 10th place out of a field of 16. The Bears shot a 54-hole 954 in the Sept. 21-23 competition, with team rounds of 317, 317 and 311.
"Yale is kind of a tricky course," said Stephanie Hsieh '15. "It was set up in a way that really made you think about how you wanted to hit your shots."
"I thought the team fared well at the tournament," said Head Coach Danielle Griffiths. "I did not have high expectations for us at the Yale Golf Course. If we were 320 or better each day, I was going to be happy, and we did that."
As this was the first time for many of Bruno's golfers on the Yale Golf Course, Griffiths said the team adjusted after every round.
"I played three first-years that have never played the golf course, and the first time to play Yale is always tough," Griffiths said. "We did not play a practice round because we were not able to miss class. However, (the first-years) handled this adversity well and played consistently for the team."
"Each day had one or two holes that had really tough pin placements," Hsieh said. "If you didn't hit the right shot, it made it harder to have to recover from that."
Hsieh led the team in scoring with yet another impressive performance, capturing 14th place individually with her 223, seven-over-par.
"Stephanie had a great showing and played very well," Griffiths said. "She is a leader on the golf course, and her play is always consistent."
The next three Bears were all first-years: Maggie Min '16 shot 236, Lauren Flynn '16 came in at 237, and Juliette Garay '16 carded a 249. Erica Farrer '13 rounded out Brown's scoring for the weekend with a 255, and Cassandra Carothers '15 shot 257 as an individual in the tournament.
Brown did beat out some of its conference opponents, finishing ahead of Penn and Dartmouth, but Griffiths said the team "can finish better than we did this weekend within the Ivy League."
"The tournament didn't go as well as we would have liked it to," Hsieh said. "But we're more prepared for East Carolina in two weeks."
The Bears will have a week off to prepare for the Lady Pirate Intercollegiate in Greenville, N.C., Oct. 8 and 9.
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