Golf will tee off against Lehigh

The Penn men's golf team heads to the Center Valley Golf Club this weekend as the two-time defending Lehigh Invitational champions. The Quakers hope to turn around their recent trend and begin playing golf as well as they performed last spring. Competing for Penn will be senior Bryan Owens, juniors Rob Goldfaden and Rob Hunt and sophomores Kieran Doherty and Kyle Moran. The team is ready to return to first place on one of the more difficult courses with a strong field from the NCAA's Eastern region. "I think we have finally gotten things together and really feel we can repeat as Lehigh Invite champs," Owens said. "The course is more difficult than the course we played last week at the Army Classic, but I think we have rediscovered our swings and are playing very well." Though the Quakers were unable to defend their title at the Army Mulekicker Classic last weekend, the results gave them confidence heading to Bethlehem. Led by Rob Hunt's 77-74 two-day scores, Penn posted a 616 team total. The Quakers took home third place and were only six strokes behind Connecticut, which placed first Overall, Penn's fall has not started as well as it has in the past. Having already competed in the Seton Hall, Georgetown, St. John's and Army invitationals, the Quakers have faced competition much stronger than in previous seasons. The score that Penn posted to win the Ivy crown -- their benchmark 300 strokes per round, the four best scores -- is proving to no longer be good enough. "We are definitely facing better opponents this year," Owens said. "We did lose both Adam Bradshaw and Christoph Kyrle, two of our better players in quite a while, but we have filled in well as a team. I really feel that we have raised this program to the next level under Francis, and now just need to do our part." The road for Penn could begin to look rosy if they can take home the Lehigh crown again. Penn head coach Francis Vaughn has yet to lose at Center Valley Golf Club in his tenure, and hopes the streak continues.