By JOHN MCGRORTY
The Cornell University men’s golf team competed this past weekend at The Quechee Club Invitational in Quechee, Vermont. At the invitational hosted by Dartmouth College, the Red came away with an eighth place overall finish. Harvard University finished in first place in team play with a final two-day score of 574, 2-under par. Hartford came in second eight strokes back, and in third was Connecticut who finished 20 shots off of Hartford. Despite Cornell’s mediocre results as a team, the Red saw some individual triumphs over the weekend as junior Brandon Eng earned his first collegiate Top-10 finish of his career.
Eng shot a 70 his first-round and a 75 in his second round on Sunday. The combination of the 70 and the 3-over-par 75 left him with a final score of 72 to tie for eighth place in the individual portion of the competition. He finished five strokes behind Penn medalist Austin Powell. Eng competed as an individual, however, so his rounds did not count towards Cornell’s overall team score.
Even without Eng’s score counting towards team play, the Red had a tremendous first round and entered Sunday’s final round in third place among the 11 teams competing in the weekend event. The Red did not perform as well on Sunday and went on to finish in eighth place overall.
Sophomore Luke Graboyes said that although the Red was disappointed with the outcome, the squad believes its strong performance on Saturday is indicative of its ability to move up the leaderboard in the future.
“We are disappointed with our finish at the Quechee Club,” he said. “We started the last day in third place with a chance to take home the title and we let a few teams jump past us on the last 18. However, we are encouraged that we were able to contend for the tournament title for the 2nd time this season.”
The Red’s top finisher in team play was freshman Mike Graboyes, who finished tied for 19th place after the final round in which he shot a 74. He had a combined two-day total of 5-over 149. Freshman Christopher Troy finished just one stroke behind Graboyes for 25th place after shooting a final-round 76.
Junior Brandon Eng reached an important milestone this weekend, earning his first collegiate Top-10 finish of his career. (BRIAN STERN / SUN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER).