Golf Team Restarts With Loss

The golf team traveled to Towson, Md. this past weekend for its first regular season match since October. The Red kicked of the spring portion of their season at the Towson Lacrosse Homes Collegiate Invitational, competing against 18 other schools from across the country. The Red placed eighth in the tournament, finishing with a final score of 622, not as high as it had hoped for. But just to be back into its regular season schedule was a great feeling for the team, said sophomore Robert Cronheim.
“It feels great to be competing again,” Cronheim said, who finished with a two-day total of 154 and who also leads the team in scoring this season.
The Red had limited practice time during the winter compared to many teams and knew that as a result it would have its work cut out. The squad was being thrust into a highly competitive tournament after nearly a five-month period of inactivity.[img_assist|nid=29354|title=Deuce of clubs|desc=Despite middle-of-the-pack finish at the Towsn Lacrosse Homes Collegiate Invitational this weekend, Cornell is determined to continue to improve its play.|link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]
“Most teams in the field had already played in several events,” said freshman Matt Jaye, who finished the weekend with a two-day total of 157. “Since we only spent a week in Florida [practicing], we knew we had a tough event cut out for us.”
Still, Cornell refused to offer up any excuses for what they deemed to be a subpar performance.
“We expect to play well every time we tee it up no matter when or where we play, and we didn’t,” said Cronheim. “We went into the weekend wanting to win, and knowing if we played well that we would give ourselves a good shot of continuing our success from the fall season.”
The Red was particularly frustrated with its performance on the last five holes of the second round where it was not able to finish out the round with consistency.
“We were not happy with the way we finished,” Jaye said. “The last five holes were really bad for all of us which was pretty disappointing.”
Accepting the fact that there is rust for them to shake off, the players know that simply getting back into their routines and consistently playing takes time. Head coach Matt Baughan emphasized this to his team leading up to the Towson Invitational.
“[Baughan] just wanted us to get back into the swing of things naturally and shake off the rust,” Cronheim said.
Cronheim was also quick to point out Cornell’s performance in comparison to the other Ivy League schools competing in the tournament. Yale and Brown both competed, tying for 14th with final scores of 632.
“Even with how poorly we played,” Cronheim said, “we still managed to beat the other Ivy League teams in the field, making us 8-0 on the year against in-conference foes. The only [Ivy League] team we haven’t faced yet is Harvard.”