Sports
Irish wrap up fall season at historic St. Andrews Links in Scotland
Andrew McGuinness | Friday, October 27, 2023
The Notre Dame men’s and women’s golf teams have probably had their final event of the fall season circled on their calendars from the day it was announced. Irish athletics have always been a global brand, and that has started to go beyond football in recent years. The football team returned to Ireland in August for the first time in 11 years. The baseball team played at Wrigley Field, the oldest ballpark in the National League, in May. And women’s basketball will head to Paris next month to take on a fellow championship contender in South Carolina.
The Irish golf team was certainly not forgotten in this mission. Both the men’s and women’s teams had the honor to play at St. Andrews Links in Scotland earlier this week. Golf has been played on the land St. Andrews occupies since the 15th century, and the course is fittingly referred to as “the home of golf.” Golf.com ranked the Old Course, one of the two courses the Irish competed on as part of the inaugural St. Andrews Collegiate Invitational Presented by TopGolf and World Wide Technology, as the third-best golf course in the entire world and the best outside of the United States.
An unordinary location for a college golf tournament was combined with an unordinary format compared to Notre Dame’s first four events of the season. Monday and Tuesday, the four schools invited to the tournament (Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, North Carolina and Georgetown) competed in a standard two-round competition. The final day consisted of a Medal Match format that functioned somewhat similarly to the Ryder Cup. An Irish golfer was pitted head-to-head against a Georgetown golfer, with the goal for each competitor being to win their matchup. However, this was done in a stroke format, as opposed to the match-play system the Ryder Cup and many one-on-one golf tournaments use.
During the first two rounds, the Irish women’s team finished tied with Georgetown for third. Two of the six top players on the individual leaderboard belonged to Notre Dame in senior Chloe Schiavone and graduate student Lauren Beaudreau. Schiavone placed third at two over par and Beaudreau finished just three strokes behind. Freshman Alexsandra Lapple narrowly missed the top 10, shooting seven over par across the two rounds.
The Irish men’s team fared a bit better, finishing third with a score of nine under par. Senior Angelo Marcon led the way for the Irish, delivering one of the best performances of his career to finish tied for fourth at four under par. Freshman Rocco Salvitti came in just a stroke back of Marcon in a tie for seventh. Sophomore Nate Stevens also cracked the top 10, coming in at two under par. Freshman Jacob Modleski also broke par by a stroke.
The men’s team also took care of business in their Medal Match, squeaking past Georgetown by winning four of the six matchups. Modleski, graduate student Palmer Jackson, Stevens and sophomore Calen Sanderson all won their matches. The women also took down the Hoyas, narrowly winning the overall match by taking three individual competitions and tying another. Beaudreau, Schiavone and freshman Anna Heck all took home victories. Junior Montgomery Ferreira’s tie brought home the victory for Notre Dame.
The Irish return to South Bend with a positive end to their fall slates and memories that will last a lifetime. The men return to action on Feb. 19, and the women will begin their spring season on Feb. 5.
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