W. golf heads to the Farm for Stanford tourney
By Yoni Tamler
The UCLA women’s golf team is relaxed and confident going into
its last regular season tournament this weekend, as well it should
be.
For a group that has placed no lower than fourth in just two
contests this season the Bruins deserve to be complacent. Saturday
they take their No. 5 national ranking into the Stanford-hosted
California Collegiate in Palo Alto.
"It’s kind of a laid-back tournament, and I expect us to do
pretty well," UCLA head coach Jackie Tobian-Steinman said. "We’ve
played Stanford a lot, the girls are pretty used to that course,
and we played pretty well the last time we were there, so I expect
that we’ll be top-three."
Among the teams UCLA meets this weekend on the Par-73, 6,
190-yard Stanford Golf Course are fellow elites Stanford (No. 2)
and San Jose State (No. 3). Missing from that list is No. 1
defending champion Arizona State, which has been stomping the
competition all year long. In fact, the Sun Devils are the only
ones capable of eradicating UCLA’s chances at a national title.
"I don’t see us winning the NCAA championship, but you never
know," Tobian-Steinman said. "ASU is an extremely, extremely strong
team this year. It will take every girl on our team to play her
very best round, every round, for four straight days. But I think
we can finish top-three easily."
The Bruins seek to add to their last national championship
(1991) with a group of players who bear a strikingly similar
statistic: all five current starters have scoring averages within
the 76-77 range. Jennifer Choi leads with 76.14.
Later this month UCLA will visit Trysting Golf Course in
Corvallis, Ore. to compete in the Pac-10 Conference Championships,
where they will face ASU and Stanford. In May UCLA travels to
Tucson to compete in the NCAA West Regional playoffs, followed by
the NCAA Championships in Wilmington, N.C.