The men's golf team apparently didn't get the storm warning. Despite causing panic on much of the Gulf Coast and eastern seaboard, tropical storm Isidore did wonders for the Tigers, who thrived in the windy and wet conditions to place second in the 20 team McLaughlin tournament over the weekend in Farmingdale, New York.
In spite of the storm remnants, the Tigers played solid golf, finishing only two strokes behind host and tournament champion St. Johns and four strokes ahead of third-place Maryland.
Freshman Jason Gerken led the Tigers, shooting a one-under par 139 over two rounds to finish fourth overall. Senior Cassidy Traub shot 142, good for a four-way tie for eighth place, while sophomore David Huestis tallied 143 to finish tied for 12th. Sophomore Creighton Page placed 15th with rounds of 71 and 73 for a four-over par total of 144.
Though the team was slated to play 54 holes over the Friday-Saturday tournament, Thursday night and Friday morning downpours drenched the course and forced the cancellation of Friday's early round.
The wet conditions caused the challenging 6,900-yard par-70 Bethpage Red Course to play longer than usual. In addition, with gusts reaching 20 miles per hour at times on Saturday, the windy conditions added to the difficulty of the course, which sits near the famed Bethpage Black Course, site of the 2002 U.S. Open tournament.
Five golfers from each school competed in the tournament, with the lowest four scores of each round counting towards the team's aggregate total. Down 10 strokes after the first day, the team rebounded early Saturday, going two under par through nine holes to stand as the only team under par on the front nine.
Three birdies on the last three holes by eventual champion Andrew Svoboda of St. John's sealed the victory for the Red Storm.
The second place finish pleased head coach Will Green, who described his team as a squad whose success rests in playing consistent par golf rather than an erratic birdie-bogie style. In fact, he thought the difficult weather conditions actually aided his team's success.
"The tougher the course and conditions, the better we play," Green said.
The coach as well as some veteran players praised in particular the performance of the low-scoring freshman Gerken, whom Green explained has a great short game and flourishes in playing mistake-free golf.
"He's probably the best player we've had here in the last ten years," Huestis said. "He's jumped in, and he's huge for us."
The fall golf season includes five tournaments from the middle of September to the end of October.
Though the Ivy League golf championship, which carries with it an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, takes place in the spring, the fall season weighs equally with the spring in ranking teams for the purpose of gaining at-large bids to the tournament.
Princeton competes in the Mid Atlantic district, one of eight in the country. The district, whose 53 schools stretch from William and Mary in the south to Cornell in the north, receives four at-large bids to the 81-team NCAA tournament. Rankings in the Mid-Atlantic district are determined mainly by a computerized system based on head-to-head match-ups and stroke differential. Ultimately, however, the decision of which schools receive bids is made by a district committee.
The three-time defending Ivy League champion Tigers always face the extra rigors of competing against the country's best golf schools, both in competition and recruiting, while training in New Jersey's less-than-ideal golf climate. For all intents and purposes, area courses are rendered unplayable from November thru February.
Still, Green has succeeded in building one of the strongest Ivy League and Mid-Atlantic district teams.
"We feel like we are the premier program in the Ivy League. Our goal is to go from being a good Ivy League program to a national program. We feel like we have a strong enough team to have a chance to win every week," Green said.
With the nucleus of Gerken, Traub, and Huestis, the outlook for the remainder of the fall and the spring is promising for the Tigers. "We're definitely a lot better this year than we have been in the past. We feel we're one of the better teams in the district," Huestis said.
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