Golfers teeing off for round one at NCAAs

The UCLA men’s golf team will begin its NCAA title campaign at the West Regional Championship at Gold Mountain Golf Club in Bremerton, Wash. The Bruins are the No. 2 seed overall among 27 teams.

The top 10 team finishers of the 54-hole, three-day event this week will advance to the four-round NCAA Championships starting May 28 at the Kempen Course in West Lafayette, Ind.

“It’s a really nerve-racking week,” said senior Kevin Chappell, the team’s leader and Pac-10 player of the year. “A bad round can definitely play you out of it. … We’ve always taken it as regionals and nationals are just one big tournament.”

Despite those jitters, the Bruins have one of the strongest teams in the field and will very likely finish in the top 10.

Coach Derek Freeman selected Chappell, senior Craig Leslie, juniors Erik Flores and Lucas Lee, and freshman Philip Francis for his five-man lineup.

These Bruins will face some familiar opponents this week.

Rival USC is the top seed in the field, and two other Pac-10 teams, No. 4 Stanford and No. 10 Arizona State, will be at the Gold Mountain Course as well.

Freeman is confident in his team after a disappointing fourth-place finish at the Pac-10 Championships on April 28.

“If all of our guys are playing well, we have a realistic chance to win a national title,” Freeman said. “That’s the black and white of this team.”

This NCAA format could favor the Bruins because it counts only four players’ scores. The Pac-10 tournament counted five scores, and the Bruins were hurt by their bottom two players ““ Flores and sophomore Jason Kang ““ who both played poorly.

This week the Bruins will count on Chappell to set the pace and lead the team. The Fresno native has excelled at NCAA Regionals in his three years at UCLA. Chappell has two runner-up finishes at NCAA regionals, and he won the East Region as a sophomore in 2006.

Chappell is a favorite for the individual title along with USC’s Jamie Lovemark and Rory Hie, and Florida State’s Jonas Blixt ““ all of whom are ranked in the top 10 nationally by Golfweek.com.

“I hope guys look to me as the leader ““ it would be a problem if they didn’t,” Chappell said. “This will be my fourth national championship; I have the experience, and I hope I can pass on the knowledge.”

The Bruins will also have some sort of home crowd: The team expects a turnout of fans for Leslie, a native of Spokane.

The team did not play at the 7,104-yard Gold Mountain course this season, but the Bruins did have a team retreat there in 2006.

While UCLA will almost certainly advance through the competition this week, the players are focused on getting into a groove so they can peak during the national championships at the end of the month.

A win at the end of May would give the Bruins their first team title since 1988.

“We really need to look at regionals as just being another tournament and get the cob webs out of the way and use it as preparation for nationals,” Chappell said. “We’re going to get through. We just need to make sure that everyone’s comfortable.”

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