Cornell golf closed out its season with a last-place finish at the Ivy League Championships over the weekend. The seven team tournament, featuring all but one Ivy League school, ran Friday to Sunday at Century Country Club in Purchase, New York.
Yale won handily, marking their advance to NCAA Regionals. Collectively, the Bulldogs shot an 887, five strokes ahead of second-place Columbia and ten ahead of third-place Harvard.
The Red finished deep in last. It closed the weekend 19 strokes behind sixth-place Penn and 32 behind fourth-place Princeton.
It’s an ugly way to end the season, but, all things considered, the team agrees it could have been worse.
“I think inexperience definitely had a part in how we played this weekend,” said junior Josh Lundmark, who led the Red with a 230, 17 over par. “It was a much harder course than most of what we’d played this season, especially around the greens.”
Lundmark was the only Cornell golfer to break the top-20 at any point during the weekend. He himself had never played at Century before Friday and knew that being green may play a role in the team’s performance. “Not having the experience of playing that type of course on that stage definitely hurt us.”
Junior Ben Choe told the Sun just last week that none of them have played the championships, even with a starting lineup composed mostly of juniors and seniors, largely due to the pandemic.
Only one Cornell golfer had any real experience on the course.
“Playing Century at my final college tournament was special for me, having played it last summer in my final qualifier for the U.S. Open,” said senior August Lascola. “It was tough to end my college career with how poorly I played this past weekend. This was the tournament we cared about the most all year, and to come in last when we felt that our games were at their peak really sucks.”
Lascola finished 26 over par, shooting a 239 to tie for 29th place, a more than respectable outcome for a competition between the Ivy League.
Just as Lascola indicated, finishing Ivy Championships anywhere but first place means the end of the line for a senior golfer at Cornell.
Lascola was particularly unlucky. He was robbed of a full year of golf by COVID-19 and wasn’t granted the extension year that the class of 2021 received, which allowed them to compete for an additional year as a graduate student at Cornell. He was granted an additional year to play in college, just not in the Ivy League.
“I do…wish that the athletics cancellations last year were handled better. In a perfect world, I probably wouldn’t have enrolled last spring if I had known that athletics were to be canceled, but the announcement didn’t come until after the semester started so I wasn’t given that choice.”
Though, it may not all be over for Lascola yet. He has received a few offers for schools to advance his golf career and continue his academics.
Even considering the stolen season, Lascola would do it all again. “Absolutely, I have no regrets at all. My four years here are something I will always cherish. The friendships I’ve formed are more important than any golf tournament ever will be, and they’ll last a lifetime.”
Cornell’s loss marks the end of the golf season.
It wasn’t all bad this week though, as Choe was recognized for his prowess in the classroom by being named to the Academic All-Ivy team.