Class on the Grass

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Courtesy: Craig Lambert, Harvard Magazine
Photo Credit: Jim Harrison

The eighth hole at the Granite Links Golf Club in Quincy, Massachusetts, is an uphill dogleg right, a short par 5 at 401 yards. On May 8, 2006, Emily Balmert '09 was playing it in the Warren Smith Memorial Tournament, a fundraising event named for the late coach who started the Harvard women's golf program in 1993. Balmert struck a good drive to the crest of a hill on the left side of the fairway. Blocked from sight of the hole, she hit a four-iron for her second shot. Director of golf Fred Schernecker '89, playing in Balmert's foursome, was standing on the right side of the fairway about 80 yards from the green when he saw her ball hole out for a double-eagle 2, three under par. He gave a shout, but Balmert didn't let herself believe what had happened until she reached the green and saw her ball "happily resting in the hole."

Later that day, Balmert shared the exciting incident with her roommate Adriana Benedict '09, who has scant knowledge of golf, explaining that double eagles are the rarest of golf scores, far scarcer even than holes in one, which are a possibility on any par 3. As luck would have it, Balmert carded her first hole in one the following season. Once again, she recounted the event to Benedict, who replied, "Didn't you get something better than that last year?"

Well, actually, she did, and not just the double eagle. As a freshman, Balmert won the Ivy League individual golf championship, becoming the first Harvard woman to do so. Since then, she has been part of a changing of the guard in Ivy women's golf, which began crowning champions in 1996. (All Ivy colleges except Cornell compete in the sport.) Yale and Princeton monopolized the league titles during the first 10 seasons. But in 2007, Columbia wrested the crown from their clutches, and last year, in the season-ending tournament at the Atlantic City Country Club, Harvard gained its first Ivy title by a robust 10 strokes and placed three golfers (Balmert, Jessica Hazlett '08, and Claire Sheldon '10) among the seven chosen for the all-Ivy team.

In fact, Balmert, a self-admitted "perfectionist," has made the all-league team every year to date. As a sophomore, she set a Harvard single-season record for stroke average (77.19 per 18 holes). Though she stands only five feet, four inches tall, Balmert can hit the ball 240 yards with her driver, which she invariably uses off the tee. ("I can't afford not to!" she says, smiling.) And her chips, pitches, bunker shots, and putts are accurate enough to have earned her the Crimson's annual Short Game Award, for the player who used the fewest strokes inside 50 yards, in two of her three seasons.

The complete (and continued) article can be found online at Harvard Magazine.

Balmert -- along with Women's head coach, Kevin Rhodes -- was also involved in a high-tech golf lesson that was documented on Youtube and can also be located in the online version of Harvard Magazine.