By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The No. 16 UCLA women’s golf team is in Washington to play
in the 22nd annual Edean Ihlanfeldt Invitational, which runs from
today to Wednesday.
The field is like a Pac-10 preview, with every conference school
participating except for Arizona. Some of the top teams include
Pac-10 schools No. 3 USC and No. 5 Stanford, as well as No. 10
Pepperdine and No. 11 Tulsa.
“We’re practicing pretty hard. Everyone’s
ready for it,” Bruin senior Laura Moffat said.
For their second tournament, the Bruins slightly changed their
scoring rotation. Going once again is Moffat, junior Alicia Um,
sophomore Saki Uechi and true freshman Gina Umeck. The newcomer to
the traveling group is true freshman Johanna Andersson, who just
came to the States from Sweden.
“She’s played really well in the last week,”
head coach Carrie Leary said. “Initially she was 12th out of
14 (golfers). She’s moved herself back into the top
five.”
The tournament is held at the Sahalee Country Club. In 1998, the
course, which means “heavenly ground” in Chinook, was
the site of the PGA Championship.
“It’s one of the most famous golf courses in the
Pacific Northwest,” Leary said. “One of the best
courses, one of the most challenging, most beautiful … it’s
really a great venue for the event.”
The team must get over their poor ninth place finish at their
last tournament, the Dick McGuire Invitational.
“Everybody’s (problem) was a little bit
different,” Leary said. “It was a lot more mental than
it was about anybody having problems with their game. The team that
we had out there was mainly freshmen. They were nervous.”
But since then, she has played up the school’s name and
made the team realize that being the gutty little Bruins is
something UCLA is known for.
“I tried to get them to understand that this is UCLA and
we expect great things here,” Leary said. “They seem
more prepared and more knowing of what to expect, which is always
helpful.”
Moffat expects that the practice they’ve had since then,
as well as the experience the Bruins gained at that tournament,
will help them be ready for the Edean Ihlanfeldt in the upcoming
days.
“We’re pretty confident that we can do well,”
she said. “We’re putting behind us our finish last
time. We want to prove to ourselves that we are a better team than
we showed.”
And even though they’re playing against a tough field and
must rebound from a poor finish, the Bruins have still set their
goals high.
“We’re always aiming to win the tournament,”
Moffat said.
This will be difficult. The defending champions are back and
leading the polls. Last year, it was the Women of Troy, now ranked
third, who took the tournament. They had a three-day total of 878,
lower than the previous tournament record of 881.