Courtesy of Brian Beard

Men’s golf is doing anything but putt-ering to the end of its fall season, with the team building momentum through some strong finishes over the last few tournaments.

The men’s golf team won the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin (CBB) tournament last weekend, defending the title from last year. Andrew Flynn ’27 won the tournament with a round of 71.

“I’ve been playing pretty solid and rebounding pretty well. I had a pretty bad home event, and then I rebounded pretty well at CBB, so it’s really just about sticking with it and seeing how you can keep playing after a bad round,” Flynn said.

The week prior, the team had a seventh-place finish at the Bowdoin Invitational at the Brunswick Golf Club with a combined score of 612.

“We didn’t play exactly how we wanted to [at the Bowdoin Invitational]. I think we put a little too much pressure on ourselves to perform at home, and that’s just a learning experience to play into that pressure,” Head Coach Jay Durfee said. “Golf is hard, and every day we go out to perform, you take something positive from every round and try and make that a positive for the next round.”

There were some bright spots for the squad at the Bowdoin Invitational: Joey Zheng ’27 finished 11th, making him the top performer for the home side with a score of 148 for the weekend.

“I like big putts, P-U-T-T-S, and I cannot lie,” Zheng said. “When we had our home tournament, I was making a lot of putts that, to be honest, I wasn’t making last year, and that made me very happy. It’s definitely something that I am looking forward to working on come spring.”

The team’s weaker performance at the Bowdoin Invitational came off a historic weekend for the Polar Bears at the Williams College Invitational, where the team placed third overall, its best finish ever at this tournament. They finished with a score of 605, just behind Middlebury College and Gustavus Adolphus College. Flynn and Zheng led the team, both scoring 149 and tying for eighth in the individual competition.

While golf is typically an individual sport, the team’s morale has been affected by the injury of captain Jack Barned ’26, who has been out for the last two tournaments.

“We have a good group of sophomores this year that were all [first years] last year and are coming back a little more experienced,” Flynn said. “Unfortunately, one of our best players, one of our captains, Jack Barned has been hurt, so it’s been a little bit tougher this fall.”

The team is looking forward to its final tournament this weekend at Skidmore College before heading into the offseason and preparing to resume play in the spring. This year, the team will have access to a golf simulator on campus to do swing work during the offseason, which has not been the case in previous years.

“We’re going to try to get the guys into a more regular routine throughout the winter, so we can get a little more time in the simulators than we have in the past,” Durfee said. “We were one of the only schools in the conference that did not have on-campus facilities for the guys and girls to practice, so it’ll be great for both programs.”

One of the main things that the team is working on going into the last tournament and the spring season is focusing on the mindset of the game. Zheng said they hope to shift to a confident outlook, shot by shot.

“We are playing not to make a bogey or not to lose rather than playing to win. In golf, there is so much trouble everywhere on every shot that if you let that creep into your head, it’s just impossible to hit a good one,” Zheng said. “This is a mindset thing that we have to get over. We need to start playing to make birdies and playing to score.”