After finishing its previous two tournaments in 12th and 11th place respectively, one would expect the Penn men's golf team to be thrilled with its sixth-place finish at the ECAC Championships over the weekend in Binghamton, N.Y.
Not quite.
After sitting in third place after the first day of the competition, the Quakers stumbled out of the gate on Sunday and slipped to sixth, finishing four shots behind Brown and well behind the winner, host Binghamton University.
"I was disappointed," Penn coach Heath Davidson said. "We certainly had our chances to put ourselves in position to win the tournament."
Penn was led by senior captain Chad Perman, who shot a one-under par 71 on the first day, finishing sixth overall.
His opening round was the third-lowest score in the entire tournament.
Perman is "playing extremely well right now," Davidson said. "I'm really proud of the way he's playing."
Though Perman was quite happy with his score, he believed that the tournament was "pretty disappointing" overall.
After firing a team score of 302 in Saturday, a fierce wind did the Red and Blue in the following day.
"We really struggled," said Perman, who called the day "an aberration."
Davidson chalked up the collapse to a bad start on Sunday, especially the first three holes.
"It put us in a position where we had to start to take some more risks, and the risks didn't pay out," he said.
One benefit of the weekend, however, was the opportunity to see two Ivy League rivals, Brown and Harvard, up close.
"We don't usually get to play against them," said Davidson.
The course, a links-style course similar to those in Great Britain and Ireland, won compliments from the team.
"It was a really nice course," Perman said.
"It's a good test of golf," Davidson said. "It was a more open golf course where you could take some risks and see what happened."
The team's next tournament will be on Oct. 19, when the Quakers will travel to the Philadelphia Cricket Club for the Big 5 Championships.
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