As the fair weather predicted for Wednesday gradually dissolved into rain, so did Amherst's chances of capturing the Little Three title from the defending champion and traditional rival, the Ephs. Williams swept the other two schools at the tournament in the morning's alternate-shot team round. On the bright side, the Jeffs stayed on top of the Wesleyan Cardinals, 3-1. The partnership of senior co-captain Andrew Bruns and sophomore Will Collins beat their Cardinal counterparts 5-3. Jesse Corradi '08 and Chris Valentine '09 took a 6-5 victory, while Glenn Wong '09 and the team's lone first-year Adam Shniderman triumphed 2-1.
Returning to the course in the afternoon, the players from the three schools launched into the tournament's individual competition. Scores stood at 2-0 Williams and 1-1 Amherst, while Wesleyan, at 0-2, was essentially out of the race. Amherst came close to toppling its higher-ranked rival, and saw particularly strong play on the lower end of the ladder. But the heroic attempt ultimately proved fruitless, and the Little Three title remained safe in Williamstown, Mass.
"I crushed so much Eph it was unbelievable," said number-eight Jesse Corradi '08. "But we lost, which was not cool. We did play really well together, though, and for the first time in a really long time, we were really close to pulling out the win."
Sunday saw Bruns, Jules, Shniderman, Valentine and Wong travel to Williamstown for a rematch against the Ephs. The team ended the two-day tournament with a score of 656, in eighth place. Shniderman played the course particularly well, and was the top Jeff scorer at 79-83-162. Bruns, whose 78 was the lowest stroke count of the Jeffs' first-day scores, struggled the second day to finish 78-86-164. Perhaps some of his good fortune from the first day passed to Valentine, who exactly mirrored Bruns' performance, overcoming a weak day-one performance to turn in a stellar second-day score, 86-78-164. Wong and Jules rounded out the scoring for Amherst with scores of 84-86-170 and 89-82-171, respectively. Shniderman remained modest about his weekend success. "The Williams tournament was yet another struggle with my putting for me," he said. "The course was playing relatively easily except for the greens, which were hard to gauge as usual. I hit the ball great, and the conditions were relatively benign but my putting got the best of me. Overall, for the team it was a hard tournament but we gave it our all and did the best we could do, given that none of us really had all of our games with us. I did however, with the help of Coach Arena, determine the problem with my putting, and I am looking forward to this coming weekend to redeem myself at Williams."
The squad will make a return trip to the Taconic this Saturday for the Williams Quad against Williams, Middlebury College and Salem State University.