COURTNEY STEWART Sophomore Travis
Johnson contemplates on the green during a match last
month.
By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The UCLA men’s golf team is starting to feel the heat
about making next month’s NCAA West Regionals, and you can
see that in their so-so performance this weekend: 13th place out of
22 teams at the Thunderbird/SAVANE Invitational. With a score of
863, UCLA was just two strokes short of tying for 10th place.
“We can’t even sit down at dinner without talking
about how we stand against each team,” sophomore Travis
Johnson said. “Last year we never even worried about it. I
just took it for granted that we were good and that we’d get
picked.”
The Bruins are in District 8, and only the top 12 teams go.
Currently they’re No. 10, but that rank can change in the
upcoming weeks.
At the Thunderbird the team shot horribly in the first round.
“We kinda shot ourselves out of the tournament in the first
round,” said freshman John Merrick, the team’s leading
scorer.
Johnson said that part of the bad play was because of worrying
about West Regionals.
“I think several of the guys are putting a little too much
pressure on themselves,” he said. “That’s why I
struggled in the first round.”
Johnson was playing well in the first round until he met the
eighth and ninth holes ““ first he bogeyed the par-5 eighth
hole, and then he snapped his tee shot into the water on the ninth
hole, double-bogeying that. He bogeyed the next four of five
shots.
“I had two bad holes in a row and then I mentally lost
it,” he said. “I was a mental midget for the next four
or five holes.”
There was a bright side to the tournament ““ three of the
five golfers made a huge improvement from the first two rounds on
the first day to the third round on the last day. Tied for 32nd
going into the third round, Merrick shot a 5-under-par 67 to tie
for 11th at 210.
“I didn’t make any mistakes, and I just played real
smart,” he said. “I think I got some good breaks in the
last round.”
He had six birdies, one bogey, and shot par for the rest of the
holes.
The morning of the final round, Johnson said Head Coach Brad
Sherfy told the team they could no longer afford any mistakes.
“Coach was like, “˜This is a big day. We need to
shoot the numbers and we just gotta beat these guys if we want to
go to Regionals,'” Johnson recalled. “And so a
few of us pulled it out.”
He shot 69 in the third round, moving from 69th to 41st place
(216 total). Junior Parker McLachlin shot 71 in the third round to
move from 52nd place to 41st with Johnson. Freshman Steve Conway
finished in a tie for 76th (221) and freshman Roy Moon placed 103rd
(231).
The team did pull through by beating Oregon State. In District
8, the Beavers are No. 11. If UCLA beats Oregon State in the next
two tournaments, it would help the Bruins keep their current rank
and get a spot at Regionals.
Their finish follows the pattern the team has set all year
““ that of being dissatisfied with their play when it was
over, and of being certain they haven’t yet played up to
their potential.
“Not all the guys on the team were playing their
best,” Merrick said. “I think we could’ve done a
lot better.”
Next up for the men is this weekend’s U.S. Intercollegiate
tournament at Stanford.