Maybe the men’s golf team just had a bad case of the Mondays.
The No. 4 Bruins followed up a horrible Monday with a solid team performance Tuesday that moved them up five spots on the leaderboard, from eighth to third place, at the Arizona Intercollegiate in Tucson, Ariz.
As a team, UCLA shot 12-under par on Tuesday, by far the best performance of the day. But the Bruins were so far behind after a 9-over-par finish Monday that they weren’t able to catch No. 10 Tennessee, which won the 54-hole tournament at Arizona National.
“Our goal today was to make sure that we shot the lowest (team) score, and we did that,” coach Derek Freeman said.
However, the solid outing Tuesday hardly erased the memories of Monday for Freeman. His message to the team afterward was much more focused on the Bruins’ lackluster play on the first day of the tournament rather than the second day.
“This was a wake-up call,” Freeman said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re going to face tough teams at every tournament from here on out, and we can’t dig a hole for ourselves that we can’t get out of, like we did this week.”
Freeman has one player who did not make those mistakes: senior Kevin Chappell.
Chappell ran away with the tournament’s individual title, with a masterful 15-under-par run. His final round Tuesday was nearly flawless. He shot a 7-under-par 64, with seven birdies and no bogies.
Chappell played excellently on the front nine all week. In the three times he played it, he recorded 12 birdies, no bogies and an eagle. On Tuesday, he shot a 6-under-par 29 on the front nine alone.
“He played so well, he managed his game and understood where his ball was going to go, and he just didn’t make mistakes,” Freeman said.
“Right now (Chappell) has to be considered one of the best players in the country.”
While Chappell plays consistently at an All-American level, the Bruin team has room for improvement.
UCLA is expected to have enough talent to contend for its first-ever national title in May. The Bruins have shown they can go very low as a team, like they did Tuesday, at almost any time.
But what has seemed to elude the Bruins is scoring well even on bad days, which is exactly what they did not do on Monday.
Freeman may consider tweaking the Bruins’ six-man lineup. In Arizona, Jason Kang, Craig Leslie and Lucas Lee all turned in 54-hole scores of five strokes over par or worse. The Bruins’ sixth man, freshman Philip Francis, finished at 4-over par.
Changes won’t be based solely on this event, though, and Freeman said he still isn’t sure on any switches he will make.
“There will probably be some shake-up,” Freeman said. “We need to go home and think about things and look at the numbers.”
The Bruins’ second team will play next Feb. 11 at San Luis Rey Downs Golf Club in San Marcos. The traveling team has two weeks off before the John Hayt Collegiate in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., on Feb. 17.