COURTNEY STEWART Sophomore Travis
Johnson and a teammate were awarded honorable mention at
the Pac-10 Championships.
By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
They encouraged each other throughout the tournament by
reminding themselves that they could leave the men’s golf
Pac-10 Championships with fat rings on their fingers.
But in the end, encouragement wasn’t enough. The Bruins
put themselves in contention to take the title in the first two
rounds, but had an off day in the last two rounds to take fifth
place overall with a four-round, 10-over-par score of 1430.
“(The finish was) not as I expected,” sophomore J.T.
Kohut said. “After the tournament we played in Stanford last
week, we all knew that we could win it, and we should’ve won
it and we didn’t.”
Last week on the same course at U.S. Intercollegiates, the
Bruins placed third out of 18 teams.
They opened the tournament strongly, shooting 357 in the first
round and an 8-under par 347 in the second round.
“Going into the third and fourth round, we knew we could
win, the way we were playing,” Kohut said.
But things went downhill from there. The Bruins instead shot 362
and 364 in the final rounds to put themselves out of title
contention.
“We all seemed to have a letdown,” said freshman
John Merrick. “It was contagious that day, for some
reason.”
Merrick would know. He was in fifth place heading into the
finals rounds (shooting 68 and 69 in the first two rounds), but
shot 78 and 75 to slip to 34th place.
“I didn’t really get any breaks in the third
round,” he said. “None of my putts were going in. I
kinda lost concentration.”
On the third day Merrick was paired with Ricky Barnes of
Arizona, who won the tournament individually.
“It was a great experience to play with an individual
winner and see what his game was like,” Merrick said.
The Bruins fell behind teams they’ve rarely beaten all
year, including tournament winner USC (1400 score), Arizona State
(1404) and Arizona (1408).
“We didn’t quite play to our abilities,” Kohut
said.
One bright spot was junior Parker McLachlin’s second
round. He shot a 65, his lowest of the year.
Overall, sophomore Travis Johnson came in 12th with a score of
283, followed by McLachlin (19th, 285), Kohut (31st, 289), Merrick
(34th, 290), and freshmen Steve Conway (37th, 292) and Roy Moon
(49th, 296).
McLachlin and Johnson were named Pac-10 Honorable Mentions.
UCLA’s performance at the Pac-10 Championships
doesn’t affect their NCAA placement. The Bruins have already
clinched a spot in the NCAA West Regionals in two weeks, and not
even a mediocre finish at Pac-10s can take that away.
But could pride and confidence have suffered a little?
“A little bit, yes,” Merrick said, “but not if
we play the way we did the first couple days.”