ROME, N.Y.—First-year Alice Zhu (Orlando, Fla.) birdied the second playoff hole to claim medalist honors while helping the Babson College women’s golf team tie for fourth place at the Hamilton Invitational on Sunday at Rome Country Club. 

The Beavers, who began the day six shots behind No. 9 Wellesley, played their first eight holes in 1-under to move atop a jam-packed leaderboard that saw five teams separated by just two strokes after 36 holes. The Green and White posted the low round of the day (310) on Sunday and finished the tournament at 48-over 624. 

Wellesley and No. 13 Amherst tied atop the leaderboard at 46-over 622 with the Blue claiming the team title on a tiebreaker. No. 23 Hamilton came in third at 623 and No. 6 Williams shot 312-312 to finish in a tie for fourth with Babson. 

After opening with a 3-over 75 on Saturday, Zhu fired a 76 on Sunday to finish in a three-way tie atop the individual leaderboard with Abby Kim of Amherst and Audrey Wang of Wellesley. She birdied the par-5 11th hole and the par-3 14th while playing her final eight holes in even par to post a 36-hole total of 7-over 151. Zhu then made a long birdie put the on the second playoff hole to become the second player in program history to claim medalist honors. 

Senior Sarah Ji (Wellesley, Mass.) posted a career-best round of 76 on the way to finishing in a tie for 10th place at 12-over 156. She made three consecutive birdies on Nos. 7-9 to get to 2-under for the day on the way to recording the first top-10 finish of her career. 

Sophomore Laura Lu (Chengdu, China) started fast on Sunday with four birdies in her first eight holes and was 3-under for the day and 6-over for the tournament heading to the back nine. Despite giving back a couple of shots late in the round, she shot a 77 and tied for 16th place with a 36-hole total of 14-over 158. 

First-year Camila Amaya (Singer Island, Fla.) followed up Saturday’s 78 with a final round 85 to tie for 32nd place at 19-over 163, while sophomore Victoria Salim (Semarang, Indonesia) closed with an 81 and tied for 37th overall at 22-over 166. 

Babson, which his receiving votes in the latest WGCA Division III poll, will wrap up the fall portion of its schedule at the NEIGA Championship on October 19-20. 

TOURNAMENT NOTES

•    Zhu joins Lu, who came in first at the Camp Lejeune Intercollegiate last April, as the only two players in the short history of the program to finish as medalist. 

•    Babson finished second in the 13-team field in par-5 scoring at 7-over, was third in par-3 scoring at 20-over and was first among all teams with 22 birdies. 

•    Zhu tied for the low score on the par 5s at Rome CC with a score of 2-under, while Lu led all players with eight birdies over the weekend.