MEN’S GOLF: Bulldogs Finish Sixth in Hamptons Invitational
The men's golf team traveled to New York to face eleven other teams, including Princeton, on Monday and Tuesday.
Courtesy of Yale Athletics
In their last tournament of the fall season, the Yale men’s golf team placed sixth at the Hamptons Invitational in New York.
From Monday to Tuesday, the men’s golf team played at the Maidstone Club in East Hampton, New York. Despite the stormy weather, the Bulldogs finished sixth out of the twelve present teams with a team total of 23 shots over par and an overall score of 887. Ben Carpenter ’25 led the team with a final score of 3 over par to place 14th overall.
“The Hamptons Intercollegiate was a good ending to a great fall season. Maidstone is always a good test of golf in difficult conditions. I really enjoyed competing for Yale again after our season was canceled last year,” Gabriel Ruiz ’24 said. “Going out to this tournament is always one of the best weeks of our fall season and it felt great to be competing against some of the best teams in the country.”
Yale’s finish in the middle of the pack placed them behind Duke, Northwestern and three-way first-place tie holders Georgia Tech, Virginia and Northwestern. Yale led eighth-place Pennsylvania and tenth-place Princeton — the only other Ivy League teams present — by 14 and 24 shots, respectively.
The Elis performed best on Tuesday in the third and final round to earn a team score of 281. As a team, they finished second in pars with 167, just 1 behind Virginia.
“Conditions were very windy and rainy the first day which proved to be a true, hard test of golf. We hung in there after day one and had a very solid day two,” Carpenter recalled. “Weather conditions were much better for the third round. I was able to stay patient and not get ahead of myself, which helped me shoot a low number to cap off our last tournament of the fall.”
In the third round, Carpenter shot 6 under par and had the fifth-best par-5 average in the tournament — 4.42. Team captain Teddy Zinsner ’22 was Yale’s second-best performer. His score of 221 earned him a top-25 spot. Zinsner finished the third round with an even score; he also had the second most pars in the tournament — 39.
Darren Lin ’22 bagged two eagles to tie for first in the tournament. Rookie Blake Brantley ’25 placed sixth in the field in par-3 average with an even score across all three rounds.
“This weekend was great. The team battled some really tough weather out there but played well in spite of it,” Brantley said. “I think it capped off a great fall season well and gives us a lot of positive momentum for when we come back in the spring.”
The Bulldogs began their fall season by winning the Alex Lagowitz Memorial Invitational in the first weekend of September. The following weekend, the team placed fourth at the Doc Gimmler Invitational. At their first home invitational since 2019, the Elis won the Macdonald Cup for their second win of the season.
For their last competition of the fall season, men’s golf will travel to Briarcliff Manor, New York to face Harvard and Princeton on Sunday, Oct. 24.
Clarification, Oct. 7 This article has been updated to reflect the other Ivy League teams present at the competition.