Golf season comes to a head at Championships

The Quakers will shoot three rounds at one of the nation's finest courses, the site of the 2002 U.S. Open. After a strong start to the spring season, the Penn golf team is set to compete on Saturday and Sunday in what it hopes will be the culmination of a year of hard work -- the Ivy Championships at Bethpage State Park's Black Course on Long Island. Bethpage Black, designed by world-renowned architect A.W. Tillinghast and built in 1935, has recently returned to prominence. An announcement was made just months ago that the Black Course would host the 2002 U.S. Open, and within the week it returned after a long drought to Golf Digest's prestigious list of America's top-100 courses, at No. 100. This is the 11th consecutive year the Ivy Championships have been held at Bethpage, a course Penn's golfers have had the opportunity to play on many occasions. Penn competed in the St. John's Invite at Bethpage this past fall, with Penn placing fourth of 24 and Adam Bradshaw the medalist of the tournament. "Our team has played the golf course well," Quakers head coach Francis Vaughn said. "It's a site we are familiar with." Five golfers will hit the links this weekend for the Red and Blue. Four of the five spots have been decided, with the final spot to be determined at practices this week. Traveling for certain will be juniors Bradshaw and Jay Weintraub, sophomore Brian Owens and freshman Rob Goldfaden. Penn has worked very hard toward this weekend, and feels prepared for the 54-hole tournament. "I think we have prepared ourselves extremely well through practice and tournaments so far this spring," Vaughn said. One problem facing all teams might be Mother Nature. Weather above all can cause havoc to a golfer. Since the format calls for 36 holes to be played on Saturday, it will be impossible for the golfers to avoid the weather. While the Quakers feel prepared to win their first-ever Ivy crown, they will need to topple both Yale and Princeton, teams that have had a stranglehold on Ivy golf since the league been holding a formal championship tournament in 1975. Either Princeton or Yale has won the Ivy crown all but three times in the last 23 years, with Princeton claiming 13 titles to itself. The best finishes that the Red and Blue have ever seen have been two second-place finishes, in both 1976 and 1984. While it will indeed be difficult to dethrone these two powerhouses, the Quakers did defeat Princeton at the St. John's Invite held at Bethpage last fall. While one more tournament exists after the Ivy Championships, this tournament has been the focus of Penn's hard work. At the bottom of the ladder for years in Ivy golf, Penn has caught its competition by storm, and is looking to open the eyes of East Coast golf with an unprecedented victory at the Ivy Championships.