Both Penn golf teams traveled out of state to different tournaments this weekend, but only one team traveled far enough to avoid the wrath of Mother Nature.
With rain forcing the tournament to be consolidated into a 36-hole competition, the men’s team was only able to muster a 10th-place finish at the Princeton Invite this weekend while the women finished fifth at the River Landing Classic in North Carolina.
Leading the way for the men’s side was sophomore Carter Thompson, who finished 20th out of the 81 golfers at the competition. Fellow sophomore Amay Poria finished just four strokes behind Thompson to card the second lowest score for the Red and Blue.
Out of the seven Ivy teams in attendance, Penn placed fifth behind Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia. Duke took home the victory on the weekend by putting up the three best individual performances in the field.
Some of the same struggles from last semester reared their heads as the lineup struggled to produce outside of the top two golfers. With matching 297 team performances both days, the Quakers were unable to break into the top half of the 13-team field.
With just the Wolfpack Spring Intercollegiate remaining before the Ivy League Championships, the emphasis will surely be on figuring out how to make sure the conference trophy stays in Philadelphia.
The women’s team made the trek down to North Carolina and came away with a fifth place finish at the River Landing Classic. Co-host East Carolina took home the win with a total score of 898 on the weekend, more than 20 strokes ahead of the Red and Blue’s 922.
The Quakers saved their best for last in the tournament. By shooting a 305 as a team on Sunday, Penn was able to hold onto their fifth-place finish.
Out of the four teams representing the Ancient Eight at the tournament, the Quakers finished second behind Harvard. Leading the charge up the leaderboard was freshmen Rachel Dai, whose 226 54-hole score was good enough for the top ten of the individual leaderboard of 75 golfers.
The women find themselves in the same predicament as the men, with just one more tournament left before the Ivy Championships, time is running out to figure out how to ensure that they’ll be the team hoisting the championship trophy on April 24th.
Their next chance to see how they stack up to their competition will come next weekend when the women play their first and only match of the season against Brown.
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