The Washington University women’s golf team drove, chipped and putted their way to a third-place finish at the Eighth Annual Wash. U. Spring Invitational this weekend at the Tapawingo Golf Club. The No. 9 Bears finished behind No. 1 Carleton College and No. 6 DePauw University, but they edged out No. 4 Grinnell College.

Freshman Julia Dai and junior Emily Carnes finished the tournament tied for 14th place at 12-over par 144. Senior Chloe DiPetrillo was just behind them, tied for 27th at 13-over par 144. Freshman Lydia Tsai and senior Sabrina Ho filled out the line up for the Bears, finishing tied for 35th at 18-over par and 42nd at 20-over par, respectively.

Through the first day of competition, the Red and Green were in fourth place, despite Dai’s strong performance. Through day one, Dai had totaled a tournament-best 14 pars and was tied for 7th at 7-over par. She finished the tournament with the second most pars at 25.

“Overall, for me, I just aim for par,” Dai said. “I don’t really try to go for birdie, so I don’t think it was super uncharacteristic for a tournament for me. I was trying to keep my score pretty low.”

On Sunday, while Dai fell from 7th place to 14th, the rest of the team surged past Carthage College and held off William Woods University to hold onto third. Across the board, the team improved on the second day of the competition. With 95 pars over the course of the competition, the Bears had the second most in the tournament. Carnes, DiPetrillo, Ho and Tsai each recorded 3 birdies during the competition. The Red and Green improved their scores from day one by 14 strokes, from 324 to 310.

“I think they were really good about looking at the first round as ‘How can we get better,’” head coach Mary Swanson said. “Certainly, I feel like that helped propel us. A couple players rebounded significantly from higher rounds [Saturday] and some maintained where they were at. Overall, they were really good about seeing [Saturday] as a learning opportunity and getting better from there.”

As the season comes to its close, the golfers’ focus remains on capitalizing on those learning opportunities and improving.

“I want to improve my swing a lot,” Dai said. “I’ve been relying on my short game in these past few tournaments, and it’s been going okay, but I think I could do better if I worked on my swing techniques going into the last tournament.”

The Bears will finish the season on familiar territory at Illinois-Wesleyan next week.

“Every tournament you prepare the same in the sense that you don’t make anyone tournament more important than another,” Swanson said. “We’ve played that golf course at Illinois-Wesleyan. Our seniors have played it twice a year. We play it fall and spring. A lot of them are very comfortable there and, honestly, it’s a pretty scorable lay-out.”