{"id":898539,"date":"2026-10-29T08:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T08:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898539\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T08:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T08:30:17","slug":"competing-at-st-andrews-links-was-a-surreal-experience-for-penn-golf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898539\/","title":{"rendered":"Competing at St Andrews Links was a \u2018surreal experience\u2019 for Penn golf"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">For three days, Penn\u2019s men\u2019s and women\u2019s golf teams competed at the oldest golf course in the world, Scotland\u2019s St Andrews Links, the 15th century course that will <a class=\"relative z-1 text-blue-mid hover:shadow-lightmode\" data-link-type=\"article-body\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theopen.com\/tickets-and-hospitality\/2027\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">host the Open Championship<\/a> for the 31st time next summer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">Called the \u201cHome of Golf\u201d , St Andrews welcomed Penn, Texas, Washington, and University of St Andrews for the St Andrews Links Collegiate from Oct. 12-14. The matches were televised on the Golf Channel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">For senior Madeleine Zang, it was a \u201csurreal experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">Zang had a special moment on the course, when the wind blew her putt into the hole. It was captured on camera and quickly <a class=\"relative z-1 text-blue-mid hover:shadow-lightmode\" data-link-type=\"article-body\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/Deb_NOnh6vD\/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">went viral<\/a> on the Golf Channel\u2019s instagram. The video has 8.1 million views, one of the most viewed reels on the Golf Channel\u2019s account.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">\u201c\u2018Oh my god, this is the luckiest putt in the whole world!\u2019\u201d Zang said. \u201cWe talked about it for the rest of the round.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">But the weather was otherwise difficult for the golf teams. Sophomore Arjun Caprihan said it felt like \u201cplay[ing] in a hurricane \u2026 it was blowing like 40 miles per hour and raining sideways.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">Women\u2019s golf head coach Mark Anderson added: \u201cI thought [the rain] was hail at first. It literally hurt your face.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">Penn women\u2019s golf finished third in the tournament, and the men\u2019s team placed fourth. Texas won both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s tournaments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">But for Penn\u2019s student-athletes, it was much more than just a competition. For many, it was the experience of a lifetime and their first visit to Scotland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">\u201cI thought it was really cool how Penn treated us properly and did this trip right,\u201d Caprihan said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t really cut corners for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p type-interstitial text-primary\">\u00bb READ MORE: <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" data-link-type=\"interstitial\" href=\"https:\/\/www.inquirer.com\/college-sports\/penn\/penn-volleyball-ivy-league-addison-pollock-libero-20261024.html\" class=\"no-underline text-blue-mid hover:shadow-lightmode\">Penn libero Addison Pollock hasn\u2019t played in weeks, but her name remains atop Ivy League, NCAA leaderboards<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">The players received jackets with both St Andrews Links and Penn logos on them and stayed at the Old Course Hotel. After the tournament, the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams played a few friendly rounds and went sightseeing with the other schools. <\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">\u201cJust being able to compete with teams that are better than us was fun,\u201d Caprihan said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">Even the coaching staff had their share of fun. Anderson got to know Penn\u2019s strength and conditioning coach Cory Walts and athletic trainer Anthony Erz while playing pool with the St Andrews students. <\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">Freshman Sophia Lu had to take a math exam right after the tournament, so Anderson printed out the exam and proctored her at 7:30 a.m. Besides the exam, Lu remembers the food they ate: pasta, bread, and cheese fondue. <\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">But she \u2014 and several members on the team \u2014 couldn\u2019t bring herself to try haggis, a traditional Scottish dish of minced sheep offal stuffed into a sheep stomach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">\u201cThree times I\u2019ve gone over [to Scotland], yet to try haggis,\u201d Anderson said, \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m ever going to try it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">Part of the trip included a tour of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, a members-only club that is not open to the public. At the club, the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams saw the original Claret Jug, then called the Challenge Belt, from the 1700s that used to be given as a trophy, and the lockers of famed golfers like Ben Hogan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">After one week of competing at a historic course , Zang said, \u201cIt\u2019s honestly kind of the peak of our student-athlete experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary   \">\u201cMakes you fall in love with golf all over again,\u201d Lu added, \u201cNothing can top that honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min For three days, Penn\u2019s men\u2019s and women\u2019s golf teams competed at the oldest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,376608,99],"class_list":["post-898539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-penn-golf-st-andrews-links-collegiate-scotland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}