The women’s golf team had to settle for second place for the first time this spring, after heavy rains forced the team’s attempted comeback victory at the Hoya Invitational on Tuesday to be aborted when the rain made the course unplayable.
The invitational was also the first time that Seo Hee Moon ’14 did not take first individually this spring, shooting +13 to tie for ninth. Captain Alyssa Roland ’11 attested to the difficult winds that plagued the course for all 36 holes on Monday.
“Today was definitely the worst conditions we’ve had to play in all year,” Roland said following Monday’s two rounds. The winds were estimated at 25 to 30 mph, a hindrance that was exacerbated by Georgetown’s open course that has few trees to screen players from the wind.
But she said the team was able to keep their heads and persevere through the adverse conditions. Sun Park ’14 and Harriet Owers-Bradley ’11 tied for a team high score of +11, good for fourth place.
“Scoring an 82 on the first 18 holes, I was definitely surprised to see I was in the top five at the end of the day,” Park said. Sacrificing distance for accuracy, Park’s adjustment to the wind allowed her to shoot a 73 for the next 18, tying for second-best individual round on the day.
The only squad in the 17-team tournament that did place ahead of them was Nova Southeastern, which won by four strokes. NSU is a Division II school, meaning the tournament will count as a win for Yale in the national rankings, which split according to division. Nova Southeastern was last year’s D-II champion and is this year’s number one D-II team.
“We were ready to go today,” Park said. “We wanted to go out there and win it all and keep the record going.”
The other Ivy League teams present lagged behind the Bulldogs: Penn and Princeton fell by 9 shots; Harvard and Columbia by 28.
The women’s team will face Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth and Brown at the Brown Invitational this Sunday, where they will see if they can best the record for wins in a single season. They currently have five.