This post was updated May 3 at 8:05 p.m.
After opening the postseason in their backyard, the Bruins will travel across the country for their next competition.
No. 15 UCLA women’s golf tied for fifth at the Big Ten championship with a 33-over 873 at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale, California, roughly 24 miles from Westwood. The conference competition, which took place April 24 to 26, contrasts with NCAA regionals, where the Bruins will travel over 2000 miles to Tallahassee, Florida, from May 11 to 13 to participate in what coach Alicia Um Holmes said is the highest-pressure event of the season.
“The whole year comes down to this, to three rounds,” Um Holmes said. “Either you perform or you don’t. Either you advance or you don’t.”
UCLA heads to Tallahassee as a No. 3 seed and will need to finish in the top five to qualify for the NCAA championship and keep its season alive. The Bruins have reached the championship the past two seasons, but this year’s squad will have to overcome a lack of experience to return to the event.
Freshman Kacey Ly and sophomore Jen Lee – both First Team All-Big Ten selections – are a pair of underclassmen on a young roster featuring only two upperclassmen.
Meghan Royal, the team’s only senior, said she thrives when the stakes are high, adding that it is something her teammates will need to adjust to.
“They’re young, they haven’t really dealt with that type of pressure before,” Royal said. “If you just continue to play your game and not worry about what it means, it tends to be a little bit easier.”
Ly, however, said she was less nervous than expected at the Big Ten championship and hopes to carry her mindset of just focusing on golf into regionals.
Um Holmes, who said the team’s opening round struggles at Oakmont – when the squad sat 13th out of 18 teams – were partially due to postseason nerves, added that she would address the pressure more directly in team meetings and keep the squad relaxed ahead of regionals.
Even if nerves are out of the equation, the Bruins will still have to overcome a long day of travel, a three-hour time change and the conditions of Florida golf.
“We’re planning on heading out a day earlier than we usually do,” Um Holmes said. “It’s not easy to get to Tallahassee from here – it’s going to be an all-day trip for us. We depart at 7 a.m., and we don’t get there till 6:30 (p.m.).”
Um Holmes said she had previously visited Seminole Legacy Golf Club – the site of the regional, where the Bruins competed in 2022 during her tenure as an assistant coach – and added that she would revisit her memory through scouting while also setting up par 3s on UCLA’s home course to mirror the yardages it will face in Florida.
Ly said she hoped her experience playing junior golf events in the Sunshine State would help her performance, adding that putting golf first is the best way she could prepare.
“The main thing is just getting on top of my studies and making sure that everything’s done so I can concentrate on being able to play,” Ly said.
Royal said she wanted to work on her accuracy off the tee before regionals arrived, adding that an important factor for facing the vagaries of Floridian weather is to be prepared for the unexpected.
Battling the Bruins, rain or shine, will be 11 other squads, most notably No. 3 Florida and No. 9 Wake Forest. No. 25 Florida State may also be a team to watch, as the Seminoles are hosting the regional and will likely be highly comfortable on the course.
Regardless of the competition or the conditions, Ly said she was just excited to have the chance to compete.
“I’ve seen our team go out and play at the natty (national championship),” Ly said. “So being able to be in their shoes and feeling it all out from a different perspective is really cool.”
Comments are closed.