This week, both of Columbia’s golf teams will be trying to replicate their wins from a year ago.

The Columbia men’s golf team will be heading to Philadelphia to compete in the 2007 Big 5 Classic hosted by Penn. The tournament marks the end of the fall season for the Lions, who are coming off of an 11th-place finish at the MacDonald Cup last weekend.

The Lions have played well in recent years at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, finishing fourth in 2005 and winning it outright last season. The 2006 competition featured two Columbia golfers, Chris Condello and Chris Arkin, sharing the individual title, while the team as a whole won by a margin of 13 strokes. This year’s squad however, consisting mainly of underclassmen, may be more comparable in experience to the Lions’ starting lineup in ’04-’05, when Columbia finished sixth out of 13 teams at the event.

The two-day event is usually played on the Wissahickon course, designed in the ’20s by one of the most prolific course architects in the history of the game, A. W. Tillinghast. Measuring over 6800 yards, the par-71 layout is known for having tough finishing holes on both nines. The 459-yard par-4 ninth is uphill and the 472-yard closing hole sweeps downhill with a creek in play. The scoring average is consistently well over par and no winner has finished in red figures in the last four years. Condello and Arkin won with totals of 146 (+4) last season.

On the women’s side, the Lions will be traveling to Richmond, Va. next week to compete in the Richmond Spider Women’s Golf Invitational. The event will be played at the Independence Golf Club. The Lions won the Rutgers Invitational during this time last season.