Tigers struggle out West

Faced with a field of strong opponents, the men's golf team had a tough time this Monday and Tuesday at The Prestige tournament in Palm Springs, Calif., finishing 15th out of 15 teams.

The tournament was attended by many schools from major conferences such as perennial powerhouse and NCAA Champion Stanford, as well as UCLA, UC-Davis, Notre Dame, USC, Cal and Illinois.

Even though the field was extremely talented, the Princeton team fell short of expectations, shooting some of the highest scores it has posted this fall season.

Senior co-captains John Sawin and Brent Herlihy were the Tigers' highest finishers, tying for 55th and shooting 14-over par, on a week where the individual champion, Cardinal Zach Miller, fired a tournament total nine-under par.

"I think that our team struggled with a lot of distractions this week, especially in the first round," Sawin said. "The course and the field were very different from what we normally see on the East Coast."

Difficult grass conditions

PGA West, near Palm Spring, Calif. is a golfer's paradise; the grass, on the other hand, is completely different from that of most courses at Princeton's latitude. PGA West employs Bermuda grass, which is fluffier and lighter, leading to "flyer lies" in which the ball can travel five to 10 yards farther than a normal shot. Furthermore, the greens themselves are much tougher to read due to the effect of the grass' grain.

Bermuda grass will grow toward sunlight, or lie down in the direction in which water flows off the green, which can cause the ball to break in ways that only an experienced Bermuda grass player can understand.

This grass is used on Southern courses for its ability to survive in heat.

"Reading greens definitely gave me trouble in the first [round]," Herlihy said, "but as the tournament went on, I found that I was able to putt much more accurately due to the experience I gained in earlier rounds."

To compound the problems of different grasses and a tough field, Princeton just did not play well this week. Freshmen Juan Candela and Greg Stamas both did not perform up to their abilities and sophomore Max Schechter, a native of southern California, played some of the worst golf of his career in the first round. For all his troubles, however, Schechter was able to regain his composure in the final two rounds and played fairly well, in comparison to the rest of the Princeton team.

Valuable experience

One bright spot the team will try to take away from this week's tournament is the experience of playing in a big tournament away from home. Though they did not play well this week, this experience will serve Princeton well if it makes NCAA Regionals this spring, a tournament with a similar field strength. In the past, regionals have been tough on the Tigers, but head coach Will Green and his team hope to find redemption this spring.

Princeton will be in action this weekend at the Georgetown Hoya Invitational in Leesburg, Va. The Tigers will surely hope that they left all of their bad swings in California and will be able to take this weekend's tournament by storm.