Northwood varsity boys golf ended their regular season with a record of 4-2 following a loss against St. Margaret’s Episcopal School, putting them in a three-way tie with them and Portola High School as they look to defend the Pacific League Championship title for their fifth consecutive year.
The pattern throughout the match was simple: their unfamiliarity with the course—as the Timberwolves had never played on the Marbella Country Club before—led to uncharacteristic mistakes.
“We’ve never played here. It’s a completely new thing,” sophomore Raffi Sun said. “There are definitely parts where I think we could have played better if we knew how the course looked like. But because we didn’t and we made some poor decisions, that caused problems.”
These obstacles showed across the board, but notable performances from sophomores Sun and Clive Kim helped steady an off day for the program, as they both shot a team-low of 38. Sun’s putting was especially on fire, sinking a 15-foot birdie putt on hole six and a total of 60 feet worth of putts.
The highlight of the day belonged to senior Michael Qu. On the fourth hole, Qu hit his initial drive way right onto another hole before hooking his recovery shot left into the bunker. However, despite the tumultuous series of shots, he holed out the next shot from the bunker for birdie.
As rough as the afternoon was, captain senior Kelvin Huang says the timing of this loss might have been exactly what the team needed.
“Today was a wake-up call,” Huang said. “The team was starting to relax, but today was an understanding to see that other teams can play well, and that we can’t put our guard down, especially before league finals.”
Coach Pang reaffirms this sentiment, saying that the team broke from its routine and got ahead of itself.
“One shot at a time. Don’t think about things you can’t control,” Pang said. “It’s important in golf to keep your rhythm, keep your focus, keep your tempo. Stick to your routine. And I think today, they got a little out of their routine.”
Finishing with a league record of 4-2, Northwood boys golf has qualified for the CIF-SS Division 1 Team Championship and will play at El Dorado Golf Course on May 19.
