By Sam Belden
The Fordham golf team may have been shut out of the top 10 for a third consecutive event, but the weekend still marked a big step in the right direction. Going up against a brutally tough slate of competitors at the MacDonald Cup, the Rams battled to a 13th-place finish, with one player toppling a school record in the process.
Fordham shot a three-round score of 881 at The Course at Yale, a whopping 41 strokes behind the winning Harvard squad. Still, the Rams took plenty of positives away from the event.
“The field at Yale this year was one of the strongest ones we as a team have gone up against in a while,” said junior Joseph Trim, who tied for 16th on the individual leaderboard. “Some of the teams playing are top 100, even top 50 teams in the country. I believe we played well as a team.”
Trim led the way for the Rams, posting three strong rounds to hold his own against some of the country’s top players. He shot the low round of his college career with a Sunday 69, moving him nine spots up the leaderboard. He also broke the Fordham record for lowest three-round score, posting a 214.
“I was fairly happy with how I played,” Trim said. “I had not had any success on that golf course in recent years, so to finish in the [top 20] was a huge positive.”
Matt Schiller, Fordham’s other junior star, had an eventful but ultimately fruitless weekend. After opening the event with rounds of 76 and 73, the Cincinnati native signed an incorrect scorecard after his final round and was disqualified. He would have tied for 58th.
The other Rams managed to complete the event, but none finished inside the top 50. Senior Oscar Cabanas came the closest, opening with a 76 before shooting rounds of 72 and 73 to tie for 51st. Sophomore Josh Madarang was one stroke behind in a tie for 58th, sandwiching a solid 72 between bookend rounds of 75. Sophomore Tommy Hayes failed to break 75 during the weekend, finishing in solo 76th.
Matt Naumec of Boston College was the medalist. The sophomore fired an opening 64 and was the only player in the field to break 70 in all three rounds, pulling off the wire-to-wire victory over Li Wang of Yale in second and Stephen Watts of Toledo in third.
The Rams have just one event remaining on their fall schedule, the Lehigh Invitational at Saucon Valley Country Club. The golfers will have two weekends off before then, and Trim believes that a restful Columbus Day weekend will go a long way towards recharging the team’s batteries.
“I think this break is exactly what we need to relax and refocus to come back and be ready to make a legitimate run at the team title at Lehigh,” he said.
“The greens at Saucon Valley are very tricky and usually very fast,” he added. “As a team, we need to put an emphasis on our short game for the next couple weeks.”
Action at the Lehigh Invitational will kick off on Friday, Oct. 21 and conclude the next day. After that, the Rams will begin their preparations for the spring season, set to get underway in March.
