This Saturday, Golf’s (11–1–2) top five players competed in the Andover Invitational at Newport Country Club, Rhode Island. Powered by a tournament-best round of 69 — three under par — Sebastian Montemayor ’27 led Andover to a second-place finish, ending in a tight playoff loss to Deerfield, marking Andover’s best finish in recent history. On Wednesday, the team sustained its momentum in facing Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter), winning seven matches and tying one.
Newport Country Club, the host of the first U.S. Open and one of the five founding courses of the United States Golf Association, added extra excitement to the Andover Invitational, especially following a weather-related cancellation last year. Ian M. Kim ’28 described the course’s history and its challenges.
“We played at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island, and it’s one of the charter members for [the United States Golf Association], one of the first five founding courses. So it’s a very special course. It was founded in 1893, so it’s a very historic course and has one of the best clubhouses in golf. The course is a links course, which is a treeless course, and it’s right by the ocean. So when it’s windy, it’s a very tough, but fun course. It’s not every day you get to play such a special course like that,” said Kim.
The standout of the tournament was Sebastian Montemayor ’27, who shot a dominant 69 to lead Andover’s second-place finish. Montemayor’s round included two eagles and several clutch putts, which matched him with Deerfield’s Tucker Gongaware ’26 and Kingswood Oxford’s Austin Perkins ’26 at the top of the leaderboard before winning a back-nine playoff. Rocco Fawcett ’28 remarked on Montemayor’s exceptional showing and its importance to the team score.
“Sebastian was making some extremely clutch putts. He had two eagles, which is nuts. The greens weren’t in super pristine condition, since it’s still early season, so making putts like that was so impressive. The two guys that he beat were also really solid. Tucker Gongaware from Deerfield also shot 69, and Austin Perkins from [Kingswood Oxford] shot 69 as well. He beat them on the back, and they did a back-nine playoff, and he won. It was a really impressive performance, and so crucial to our team doing so well,” said Fawcett.
After Andover and Deerfield finished tied through their top four scores, the tournament came down to the fifth-player tiebreaker. Eddy Zhang ’28 represented Andover in the playoff position and delivered a strong round of 80, but gave Deerfield the title by one stroke. Despite the narrow loss, Andover’s second-place finish marked a major improvement from its fourth-place result at the 2024 Andover Invitational. Fawcett reflected on the close finish.
“We brought five players, and you take the four best scores, and then the fifth is the playoff. We ended up losing by one, which, all things considered, is pretty solid. Obviously, it stung when it happened, and you’re disappointed in the moment, but overall, it’s a great finish for the program. We were tied with Deerfield through our first four players, so it went to our fifth guy, Eddy Zhang. He’s a really strong golfer. He went out and shot 80, which is exactly what he needed to do, but Deerfield happened to shoot 79, and we lost by one,” said Fawcett.
Against Exeter on Wednesday, Andover carried its momentum into a dominant 7.5–0.5 win, with seven players winning their matches and one tying. Zihan Zhao ’28, who extended his undefeated 7–0 personal record with this game, recalled his final game-sealing birdie to take the match.
“My best hole of the day was probably my seventeenth hole. That was my hole for the win. It was a par three. I was two up with two to go. I ended up flushing a six iron to around five feet, and then made the left-to-right, sloping downhill putt. It was a birdie for the win,” said Zhao.
Golf will face Dexter Southfield on Friday, Deerfield on Saturday, and St. Paul’s next Wednesday.
