On the second hole of his round at the Bowdoin Invitational on Sunday, Nick Wallen '09 was soaking in the experience of the first golf tournament of his Brandeis career. Wallen put his third shot 20 feet from the hole, and then drained his putt for par on the way to the Judges' eighth-place finish in the 15-team field. The University of Southern Maine won the tournament, while Bowdoin finished sixth place in its home event.

Wallen was the team's lowest-scoring rookie, finishing the tournament with scores of 85 on Saturday and 79 on Sunday.

"It was exciting out there," Wallen said. "I've never played at this level before, but it was fun."

Captain Josh Levine '06 was the team leader with scores of 77 on both days.

"The [first-years] are playing on new golf courses," Levine said. "They have to learn the courses they probably will be playing for four years. Once you get experience, you get to know the courses and you remember them."

Coach Bill Shipman said that he was pleased with the play of his rookie golfers and expects the future competition to boost their performance.

"We have some guys at home that are capable of playing as well as these guys," Shipman said. "So I think they will compete for the positions with everybody else and then we are going to see more good scores this year."

The Judges' team features three key contributors without significant tournament experience at the college level: Wallen, fellow first-year Adam Hattenbach '09 and Adam Green '08, who was on the team last year but did not receive significant playing time in tournaments. Hattenbach shot 82 on both days, while Green shot 82 on Saturday and 92 on Sunday.

"I was glad to see that [the first-years] had good scores," Shipman said. "They played fairly well under college pressure, and we expect them to do even better in the future."

The team finished with combined scores of 324 on Saturday and 322 on Sunday.

Despite their improvement on Sunday, the Judges fell from seventh to eighth after a late Sunday charge by Tufts University, whose team posted an improvement of nine shots from Saturday to Sunday.

The Judges' next tournament will be the Duke Nelson Invitational in Middlebury, Vt. on Saturday and Sunday.