Senior team captain Zach Vinal had his best career tournament at the Yale Invitational last weekend in his four years at Binghamton University, finishing in a tie for third individually out of 149 players in the field and propelling the Bearcats to a tie for fifth place out of 27 teams in the field. The Bearcats shot 590 as a team and finished just five strokes behind first place Harvard on the exceptional 6,749 yard, par 70 course.

After the first round, Vinal led all players in the field by one stroke after shooting a 2-under-68, but dropped back to fifth after he bogeyed three out of his last four holes to lose by one shot. Because the field got off to a late start and was in danger of not being able to finish the last four holes of the second round due to darkness, the players were carted to each of their shots, which could have thrown off the players’ rhythm.

The players had great weather to work with in round one but experienced fiercer weather in the second round, characterized by torrential winds and aerated greens.

“Overall I felt I had a really good tournament, but I felt I had an excellent chance of winning and just let it slip by,” Vinal said. “The first round I had just 27 putts and drained four putts over 40 feet which were huge because they were key birdies and the greens were extremely difficult to putt on.”

But perhaps the most important thing gained by the Bearcats last weekend was experience, because of how young the team is. Through the years Yale has consistently been one of the hardest tournaments, and every year it becomes a bitter struggle to the very end to avoid collapsing from the pressure exerted by the course.

Because freshman Mike Surdey had been injured for the past few weeks due to back spasms, it became exceedingly difficult for him to rotate his whole body in his swing, which was a big reason why he struggled last weekend shooting rounds of 83 and 78, respectively. But he played well enough in the team playoff the week before the tournament and earned his spot in the starting lineup as a result.

This weekend, the Bearcats head to Providence, R.I. for the New England Championship in what has historically been the biggest tournament of the spring season. The Bearcats have had great recent history at New England and look to live up to expectations once again. However, this weekend will be tougher than in years past because three out of five players in their starting lineup have never played the Triggs Memorial golf course before.

“I think the course is favored for those players who have played it the most, but it’s also a course that you can light up the first few times you play it,” Vinal said. “This team is hungry, we want to win, we felt like we let both the Rhode Island and Yale tournaments in the fall get away from us … We all just want to win so badly after last week’s tournament at Yale and we feel like we are very close.”