Men’s Golf Finishes Fifth After Two Days at Williams Invitational

This weekend, the men’s golf team travelled to the Williams Spring Opener Tournament in Williamstown, MA at the Taconic Golf Club. The Mammoths competed against eight teams from around the NESCAC, including rival and host Williams.

The first day of action saw Amherst off to a solid start. The Mammoths’ scoring group included four sophomores and one junior, although others competed as non-scoring players. With the best performance of the team on the first day, sophomore Jack Klein shot a 78. Sophomore Jeffery Herr’s solid performance put him just three strokes behind Klein with a score of 81. Cameron Clark ’20 could not quite tie with Herr, finishing just a stroke behind him. The lone scoring junior, Jack Burlison, finished with score of 85. Burlison tied with Nicholas Kumamoto ’20 and Will Lonnquist ’20, rounding out Amherst’s scoring players.

Surprisingly, although not entered as a scoring competitor for the Mammoths, Cole Vissicchio ’20 finished tied with Klein with a score of 78. All together, Amherst scored 326. Trinity finished in first with combined score of 302 strokes, although with a strong enough performance on the second day, the Mammoths stood a fighting chance to climb up the leaderboard from fifth.

After an early start at 9 a.m, Amherst set out to improve on the previous day’s outing. The non-scoring Vissicchio notched another 78 in the score book, for a total of 156, which put him 13th at among the entire competition, Amherst’s highest individual finish.

The Mammoths’ scoring group was paced by Kumamoto, who scored a weekend-low 76, which put him among the day’s top scorers, a vast improvement over his previous day’s outing. Burlison finished second among the Mammoths’ scorers, posting a four-stoke improvement over his previous outing to finish with a total of 162 on the weekend. Klein lagged after his team-pacing day one performance, shooting an 86, moving him back to 25th place among all competitors. Clark and Herr finished the day with scores of 84 and 83, respectively, which allowed them both to finish tied for 28th. Overall, the Mammoths were unable to improve their position from fifth, finishing with a total of 644 strokes, finishing 46 strokes behind victorious Trinity.

Amherst will seek to improve its performance after last weekend’s showing in the upcoming slate of matches and tournaments. This week, the Mammoths will travel to Wesleyan to compete in the Little III Championship on Wednesday, April 25. Next weekend, Amherst will journey to compete in the NESCAC Championships, hosted by Trinity. The Mammoths will tee off at 9 a.m. on Saturday, April 30.