A swift, precise stroke of a driver is followed by a crack as the golf ball flies down the fairway. Poly’s varsity golf team, which consists of just three players, junior Jerry Fu, sophomore Cici Liu and junior Annabelle Chan, make up for their lack of numbers with a plethora of talent.
Although they sit at a disappointing record of 1-10 overall, this does not reflect the talent of the golfers. Team golf is scored by adding each player’s stroke count. However, a minimum of five players must be recorded for a match, so with only three players on their team, Poly must record two automatic 72-stroke players, which is well above the average strokes of the Poly golfers, which sits between the 40s and 50s. In terms of team statistics, this lack of numbers is by far their greatest weakness.
This year’s team has felt the loss of two of last year’s seniors, Julian Harrison ’23 and Paige Lim ’23, who were both key competitors.
Head coach Dale Rasmussen said, “All of the matches are tough as we try to have our team’s lowest score lower than our opponents’ three lowest scores. This is tough as our opponents have six players and we only have three.”
However, even with the major disadvantage of having only three players, the Panthers still managed to beat Rio Hondo on Tuesday, April 9 in a match where they won by 47 strokes, 258-305. Liu shot 36 strokes on the day, Fu shot 41 and Chan shot 37, all of which are impressively low scores for high school golf.
Liu attributed their win to adequate preparation time. “We had a lot of time to warm up that day. The coach made the dismissal time pretty early that day,” she said.
All three golfers also play competitively outside of school; that extra commitment has helped them hone their skills.
“The strength of our team is having three committed golfers. All our players spend a lot of time practicing,” said Rasmussen.
Fu noted, “Annabelle’s mentality, Cici’s technical skills… and my motivation and leadership; we are able to beat teams because of that.”
As the Panthers head into the final stretch of the season, they still have a few goals they hope to accomplish. Although the team can’t qualify for CIF playoffs as a whole, all three players hope to qualify as individuals. Additionally, they hope to win back the Mystika Niblet, a putter awarded to either Poly or rival Flintridge Prep depending on which team is more dominant that year.
