Golf Teams Both Look Forward to October Tournaments with Nescac Implications

Last weekend, Sept. 16 and 17, the golf teams took the course to tune up for future tournaments with greater Nescac implications. The men’s squad was at the Ralph, placing ninth out of a 25-team field in the 34th-annual Duke Nelson Invitational. The women’s squad also took part in an annual invitational, but they had to take a familiar three-and-a-half hour trip south down I-89 to the Nehoiden Golf Club in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for the Ann S. Batchelder Invitational. The Panthers recovered from a tough first day to finish third in the six-team field.

For the second straight week, the women’s team saw a significant first-to-second round improvement. Unlike their first week of action in the St. Lawrence Invitational that was held at the unfamiliar Oliver D. Appleton Golf Course in Canton, New York, the Nehoiden course in Wellesley is relatively familiar to the Panthers.

“In golf, there’s a fine line between being focused and trying too hard,” Chloe Levins ’20 said, speaking to the team’s slow starts. “Golf likes low expectations. We let our desire to win get the best of us on day one.”

After carding an 84 on Saturday, Levins apparently took her own advice and marked down her score by eight strokes to shoot a 76 in Sunday’s round.

Levins expressed that the team played a more characteristic game on Sunday by staying “patient and present.”

“On day two, we went back to doing what we do best,” Levins said.

While it was the second competition the team has played in thus far, last weekend’s tournament was the first time the team has played since classes started.

“With classes underway, it’s always more difficult to perform at your peak level in any sport,” Levins said. “Our ability to play good golf while keeping up with school will only get better as the season goes on. We’ve started on the right foot.”

Blake Yaccino ’20 once again saw her score slightly decrease from the first to second rounds. But scores of 78 and 80 are nothing to sneeze at.

“I can’t really attest to improvement between rounds because in both tournaments I did worse the second round,” Yaccino said when asked about the relative struggles the team appears to have on the first days of tournaments. “However I believe that my team did better the second round due to confidence. Nerves have calmed by the second round and having played holes before you are aware of course management and can play the course more wisely.”

Katharine Fortin ’18 was among the Panthers to improve markedly from Saturday to Sunday, shooting an 80 then a 75. Among the top three teams in the tournament, only Levins had a better round-to-round stroke reduction (eight) than Fortin’s five stroke improvement.

In preparation for next week, Yaccino said that the team’s focus should be on the little things.

“I hope that we can prepare ourselves by working on little things that shave off strokes,” Yaccino said. “Wedges from 100 yards in and decreasing the amount of three putts by working on distance putting this week,” she said, are among the aspects of the game the team will work on.

“I hope we can go into the weekend with confidence in our preparation and be ready to compete and shoot consistently better in both rounds,” Yaccino said. “Not just the second round.”

“It goes without saying that we all want to perform our best at Nescacs,” Levins said of the tournament looming next month. “The best way to do that is by staying completely present and purposeful about our practice each and every day. There’s always something to work on, so now it’s time to get to work.”

And the Panthers are not that far off from their goal, which Yaccino addressed directly.

“We’re just around five to 10 strokes off Williams,” she said. “So it’s really exciting for the team and I think knowing that helps push us to keep grinding.”

Meanwhile, the highlights on the men’s side were Graham Kenter ’17.5’s and Joe Ko ’18’s career weekends. Kenter shot a 75 on Saturday, and Ko shot two fantastic rounds of 71 and 72, proving that it may actually be possible to master the Ralph.

Ko credited the improvements we are seeing in his game with the work he put in this offseason.

“I think the main reason why I did well was due to the amount of work I put in leading up to the tournament,” Ko said. “Like in any other sport, sometimes spending the extra 30 minutes to work on your game can definitely make a difference during the real game.”

When asked if he knew he would have a career day early on in Saturday’s round, Kenter reported that he actually had to overcome quite a bit of adversity at the start.

“Saturday started off really slowly,” Kenter said. “It was a shotgun start so I started on hole number two and was five over thru my first five holes, and six over thru seven holes.”

Kenter kept pushing though.

“I played really solid for the next 11 holes, going two under,” he said.

Despite the ninth-place finish, the weekend was productive for the Panthers.

“It was great that everyone got a chance to compete over the weekend,” Kenter said. “It is really hard to replicate tournament golf in practice so it is great that we were able to have 12 guys out there.”

With that, Ko and Kenter both alluded to a trend that coach Beaney and many of the Panthers have noticed over the last season-plus.

“The competition in the Nescac has ramped up the past two years and we still need to grind as a team,” Ko said.

This is certainly true. In fact, the competition overall has been improving, not just in the Nescac.

“Bennett, Joe and I were talking after the round about just how much better the level of play has gotten since we came into the program,” Kenter said. “Babson shooting 572 would have been unheard of a couple years ago. And I think seven teams broke 600. Even with the great scoring conditions this weekend, it really goes to show how much better the level of competition is now then it was four or five years ago.”

The Panthers have long dominated the conference and have had the likes of Williams, Trinity and Amherst striving to gain ground. Especially with the absence of Reid Buzby ’19 and Phil Morin ’19, both abroad, the Panthers need to take advantage of every opportunity that comes their way to ensure a top-four finish at the Nescac qualifier next month.

“I think we have a really deep team,” Kenter said, “even with Ben Bichet ’19, Phil and Reid abroad. I think our depth will serve us well in the next couple of weeks.”

“I think this tournament was a reminder for the entire team that we still have a lot of work to do,” Ko added. “We saw a lot of great things this week from the team, especially the first-years. However, we are definitely not content with the results. I think this weekend will be a great motivating factor for us to work harder.”

The men’s squad is heading into what will be a pivotal weekend in their last chance to tune-up for the Nescac qualifier. They will head to Williamstown, Massachusetts, for the Williams Fall Invitational at Taconic.

“I hope that this can be a tournament where we can play well, get confidence, and have it be a testament to ourselves that we, as a team, are more than capable of bringing Nescacs back to the Ralph in the spring,” Ko said.

The women’s side will also make the trip to the Bay State, as they will play at The Orchards golf course in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for the Mount Holyoke Invitational.