Monday, February 10, 1997
W. GOLF:
Defending champion Arizona among competitors to measure team’s
improvement By Chris Umpierre
Daily Bruin Contributor
After finishing four shots from its second national championship
last year, the UCLA women’s golf team is set to make another run at
the title this year. The Bruins will begin the second half of the
golf season today as the team travels to Palos Verdes to
participate in the Regional Challenge.
To help the Bruins’ chances in the winter, the golf team added
Sofie Sandolo, a very talented sophomore from France who is
expected to contribute immediately.
Sandolo will in fact be one of the five players to participate
in the Regional Challenge. Seniors Jeong Min Park and Eunice Choi
along with juniors Betty Chen and Amandine Vincent will fill out
the rest of the lineup. Vincent carried much of the load for the
Bruins in the fall as she recorded the Bruins’ three top finishes
this season. She leads the team with a 76.6 stroke average.
The Bruins graduated two All-Americans last year but returned
two All-Americans to this year’s squad. Although the nucleus of the
team was intact, the Bruins struggled through the first part of
this year’s campaign.
The Bruins finished second in representing the United States in
the Topy Cup at Tokyo, Japan. However, they amassed a disappointing
eighth place and two 12th-place finishes among their five fall
tournaments.
The Regional Challenge tournament will serve as a measuring
stick for the Bruins to determine how much they have improved over
last quarter’s results. The team, which aspires to return to their
form of last year, when they finished every tournament in the top
three, must begin to put up good numbers if they hope to avenge
their fourth place finish in the NCAA Championships last year.
"[The Regional Challenge] will kind of give us an idea of how we
are doing," head coach Jackie Steinmann said. "To see how much
better we really are now that we are in the swing of it. We’ve been
working pretty hard so I think we’ll be fine."
The 54-hole Regional Challenge will feature top teams such as
Arizona, who won the tournament last year, Arizona State and San
Jose State.
"[The players] didn’t come out shooting right from the hip in
the beginning of the year," Steinmann said. "This has taken them a
little while to get used to. After this tournament, I’ll know
better."