This upcoming weekend, the golf team will finish its season at the Ivy League championship in Galloway, N.J. The Red will try to improve from last weekend, where the team finished seventh out of nine teams at the Century Intercollegiate Tournament. The Red was led by sophomores Craig Esposito and Zack Bosse, who finished 11th and tied for 16th place, respectively, with two-day scores of 154 and 156, respectively.
On the first day, the Red struggled, as four of five players — sophomore Carl Schimenti, senior co-captain Alex Simson, senior John Dean and Bosse — had scores in the 80’s. However, the team turned around in the second round, putting together a combined round of 310 — just six strokes behind Rhode Island, who won the tournament. The disparity between the two rounds accented the consistency issues the team has been facing all season, according to senior co-captain Alex Lavin.
“Last weekend was an example of what I’ve been saying all along: our main issue is consistency. We have issues putting together a few good rounds,” he said. “The best way to look at it is that in the second round, we shot one of the best scores of the tournament, but for some reason couldn’t go out and do that in the first round.”
Similar to Lavin, Simson drew some positives out of the team’s play in the second round.“I think you can definitely consider us resilient in the second day,” he said. “On the first day, there were extremely good conditions to play in, which is rare for this time of year. We normally see rain and high winds, and that’s exactly what we got on Sunday. As a team, we actually played much better the second day, even though the weather was worse.”
Going into the last tournament of the year, the team is slightly anxious, though everyone’s nerves will most likely not affect their play, according to Lavin.
“We’re all going through some emotions preparing for the tournament,” he said. “There’s definitely more [intensity] to the practices than usual just because it’s the last event; the last chance of the year to show everyone what we got … I would say that the nerves will probably be about the same … as the butterflies you get in the first tournament, but we’re all experienced and [we know] that we have to go into this tournament with the same mentality so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
For the Ivy League championship, the Red hopes to not fall into the same situation it has found itself in this past weekend, according to Simson.
“One thing we hope to do is to start off a little stronger,” he said. “We want to get in the middle of the pack so that we’re not playing from behind, but that’s easier said than done.”Despite its issues with consistency, Cornell expects to contend with the heavyweights of the Ivy League for the championship.“
Going in, obviously we expect to win,” Lavin said. “There’s really no reason why we can’t compete with anyone in the Ivy League. Prince and Harvard are good — not to mention Yale and Columbia — and they’re all going to come to play, but on any given day, we can go out and beat those teams, so our expectation is to win.
”One small advantage the Red have going in is Dean’s experience with the course.“This is the second consecutive year we’ve played at Galloway National [Golf Club] and of the five people that are playing, only John Dean has played this particular course,” Simson explained. “He played it well for us last year, which is great, so when we have our practice round on Thursday, he can guide us around the course a little bit, which will be really helpful.”
Original Author: Albert Liao