Edgemont boys golf shoots 215 in stellar season opener

While a 215 won’t beat the truly elite teams, it should beat most of the teams Edgemont will play this season and set several players up well for a spot in sectionals.

“We’re definitely trying to win the league this year and our biggest competitor will be Bronxville,” senior Victor Roehl said. “We’re trying to prepare for that. We need consistency with our practices and in general we need to go to the range more. I think this year our team is, in my opinion, the best it’s been. The only thing we can do at this point is consistently practice and compete.”

Sophomore Ethan Klein led Edgemont with a 41, but the next four scorers were all within four strokes: senior Ethan Sommers at 42, Roehl 43, senior Ben Tran 44 and senior Milan Patel 45. Freshman Noah Goldstein shot a 52.

Blind Brook was led by a 40 from Max Pollitzer and had three more strong scores with Jake Goldowsky at 43, Dan Karetsky 44 and Jack Bachman 46. The team’s fifth and sixth golfers shot 53 and 52, respectively, giving the Panthers that edge.

Tran is Edgemont’s most experienced, most accomplished golfer and he’s been on the team since he was in eighth grade.

“Ben has got aspirations to compete at the state level and he really wants to make a run,” DiChiara said. “He’s invested a lot of time and energy into that.”

Getting physically and mentally stronger has helped Tran develop his game.

“My mind for the game evolved and I got more mature and I began to hold myself to a higher standard,” he said. “In my mental game, I’d try to stay more focused on the shot that’s ahead of me and not what’s after that.”

That’s a message he’s passing on to his teammates. “I try to tell my teammates that the mental side is so important and that’s what’s under your control,” he said. “I feel like a lot of my teammates have really tried to implement that into their game, to focus on one shot at a time. That’s why I feel like this is one of the better teams I’ve been part of. This is the strongest, most experienced.”

Roehl agrees with Tran about the mental Improvement being key.

“After I have a bad hole, like I shot an eight, you can let that hole get to you and try to play more aggressive to make up for it, but golf is a meditative sport,” he said. “You need to keep calm and you can’t let any good shot or bad shot affect how you play.”

With improved play, Roehl and Sommers are expected to make sectionals as they were contenders last spring. DiChiara expects both of the to have “strong seasons.”

DiChiara could see Patel’s improvement from the very first tee shot of the season. He noted Klein has “significantly improved” from last year at this time and said Goldstein has “put in the time.”

In addition to graduating Patel, Sommers and Tran, freshman alternate Gobind Khosla will be transferring, so this is a big year for the team to take advantage of.

“We’re usually between 11 and 14 golfers, but we’re going to lose three strong golfers for next year, so this year we’ve got to make something happen,” DiChiara said.

The team started the season with eighth grader Henry Smith as an alternate and added three newcomers to the team, junior Luke Sribhud and sophomores Will Agoglia and Braydan Segall. A seventh grader also tried out and could return to the team in the future when he’s ready.

Edgemont was 7-7 last year, but only has 11 matches to get the job done this year due to transportation issues. There is no bus and parents are relied upon to drive to matches, so DiChiara wasn’t able to schedule any northern teams. Edgemont also has only five match dates at Sunningdale.

Last year DiChiara believed the team could have been a bit better.

“Some of those I felt we didn’t play as well,” he said. “If we had played more consistently we’d have improved on that .500. I know the time has been put in for this year, so it’s just a matter of if they can score.”

DiChiara hopes that in addition to the physical game and mental game the players are learning to manage the courses and choose their clubs and shots wisely.

“Going back to the days of James Butler, he was the definition of a scrambler,” DiChiara said. “His swing wasn’t the strongest, he was hunched over because the golf shafts were always too short, but he’d always scramble to shoot 40 or 41 because he knew how to score. Sometimes it’s about knowing how to score, not necessarily having the perfect round.”

DiChiara is doing his best to get a wide variety for his teams to play on, but doesn’t have typical home and away matches against White Plains and Mamaroneck this year. He picked up Westlake and Tuckahoe instead.

The good news is the early warm weather.

“This is almost a shock, the way it used to be,” DiChiara said. “You figure by May you had some form of a farmer’s tan. Last year I was a ghost. Or you had windburn.”

No matter the course, the conditions or the opponent, DiChiara is looking for his team to build off opening day.

“It’s a good group and the improvements just need to pay off,” he said. “I see the time they put into it. Now they just have to do it.”