The UCLA women’s golf team has seen a lot of leaderboards
in its time.
But never one like this.
Upon completing the third and final round of the Kent Youel
Invitational in Kapolei, Hawaii, on Wednesday evening, the Bruins
gathered around the 18th hole not knowing exactly how each
individual golfer finished.
When they finally got the chance to take a peak at the
leaderboard, not only did it confirm that UCLA virtually walked
away with the tournament title, it established that the three best
individual performers all were toting Bruin emblazoned golf
bags.
Freshman Amie Cochran, junior Susie Mathews and senior Charlotte
Mayorkas finished 1-2-3 respectively in a field of 79 players,
something coach Carrie Forsyth doesn’t recall ever happening
before.
“We have been very close sometimes,” Forsyth said.
“But having three players, wow.”
The only team to survive the Kapolei Golf Course on the island
of Oahu under-par, No. 3 UCLA strolled to an easy 19-shot victory
with a 5-under par team total. But though the team as a whole
played as well as it has all fall, it may have been the individual
performances that stole the spotlight. The brightest of those
performances came from Cochran, one of the most heralded recruits
in the country last year. Even though Cochran double-bogeyed her
final hole of the tournament Wednesday, she still walked away as
the individual medallist, posting a 54-hole score of 4-under par.
She bested her teammate Mathews by a single shot.
The victory is only the first that Forsyth expects out of her
prized freshman to accumulate during her collegiate career.
“To have a win like that early in her career, that’s
awesome for her,” said Forsyth of Cochran.
But the freshman had a lot of help in leading the Bruins to an
easy rout of the competition. Mayorkas’ 3-under par 69 in the
first round of the competition, which tied for the lowest score of
the tournament, staked UCLA to an early lead it would never
relinquish. Sophomore Hannah Jun also joined in on the fun, posting
a top-10 finish by tying for ninth place at 4-over par. With four
players vying for the individual title, Bruin golfers were not only
competing against the field, they were competing against each
other.
“We came into the day with a 15-shot lead; that’s
sort of hard to blow,” Forsyth said. “The team
competition had taken care of itself. To be competing against your
own teammates introduced a weird dynamic.”
But it was a dynamic that pushed her golfers to compete even
harder. Up until this point in the season, the defending champions
were still searching for their first win of the year. But even
before this tournament began, the team had a feeling it would find
its game on the sandy beaches of Hawaii.
“I have a sense from the girls that they expected to win
this tournament,” Forsyth said. “We came into it
thinking if we didn’t win, then there was something
definitely wrong.”