May 14, 1999
by Jim Mullins
Assistant Director
Sports Information

Corsairs finish with 3-2 record including a narrow win in the 1999 UMass Dartmouth Invitational Tournament.

(Dartmouth, MA) -- In his second full season with the UMass Dartmouth men's golf team, Coach Paul Fistori's team produced a 3-2 record, including a championship in the Corsairs' own invitational tournament.

In a season which included 12 matches, highlighted by a third-place at the Worcester State Invitational and a tenth overall as the Massachusetts Intercollegiate championships, UMass Dartmouth's biggest win of the season was determined by one round which didn't even count in the team's final scoring for the day.

UMass Dartmouth and Worcester State both finished with team scores of 356, but the host Corsairs captured the UMass Dartmouth Invitational title by virtue of a fifth-score tiebreaker. The Corsairs were declared winners of the invitational played at UMass Dartmouth's home course at Country Club of New Bedford on April 29. UMass Dartmouth was first followed by Worcester State (356), Worcester Polytech (359) and UMass Lowell (361).

Joe Lopes (Sagamore, MA) fired UMass Dartmouth's low round at the invitational tournament, while Joe Henderson (Cotuit, MA) carded an 86. Brad Costa's 93 and Trevor Norton's (E. Freetown, MA) 95 rounded out the Corsairs' official scoring for the day. The four low rounds of the day comprised each team's score in the tournament.

With two teams deadlocked at 356, the match and championship were decided by Dave Albernaz's (Swansea, MA) round of 102 which did not count in the team score, but was the deciding factor to break the first-place tie.

UMass Dartmouth's captain Jon Ruel (Mattapoisett, MA) played only three rounds for his team during the Spring, but he turned in the lowest stroke average of the season at 82.3. In five rounds for the Corsairs, Lopes was second at 82.4, with Matt Lane (Holden, MA) third with a stroke average of 87 in his four rounds. Lane's 77 in the final match of the season against Salem State and Stonehill was the second lowest round of the season.

Lopes and Ruel tied for the honors of firing the low round of the season when both players carded 76's in UMass Dartmouth's third-place finish at the Worcester State Invitational on April 20.

For the season, the Corsairs played 24 rounds and fired a team stroke average of 86.7.