The UCLA men’s golf team has jumped out to two first-round leads in their last three tournaments.
The team’s issue has been hanging on to those leads.
The Bruins will give it another shot this weekend as they head south to Newport Beach to compete in the first-annual Battle at the Beach at Pelican Hill Golf Club’s north course. No. 14 UCLA is co-hosting the event with Long Beach State University and they’ve chosen to structure the competition a six-count-five format, in which six players compete and five scores are counted. Six-count-five is something that assistant coach Ryan Ressa says is starting to become the trend, as opposed to traditional five-count-four tournaments.
“It tests the depth in your lineup which is a unique thing but I think this format is gaining momentum in college golf. Our Pac-10 championships are played the same way,” Ressa said.
The Bruins will stick with the same four players at the top of the lineup who have led the way so far in the season: freshmen Pedro Figueiredo and Pontus Widegren along with Alex Shi Yup Kim, and Gregor Main, both sophomores. The oldest player on the team as a junior and the only reaming player from 2008’s national championship, Connor Driscoll will join the Bruins after missing fall quarter due to academic ineligibility. Freshmen Mario Clemens and Bobby Lange round out the lineup with Lange playing as an individual, not eligible to be counted in the team’s score.
Driscoll is looking to lead this young team to more consistent play.
“I’m excited to get out there. The last two years, I haven’t played as well as I wanted to but I’m happy to be back out there with my teammates,” Driscoll said. “I want to play well and take the leadership role, as I should.”
In order for the Bruins to score well at Pelican Hill, Ressa stressed the importance of the short game.
“Driving the ball is one of our strengths. Right now we’re struggling around the greens and that’s the most important part of the game,” Ressa said. “That’s the difference between a top-15 team and a top-five team.”
Coach Derek Freeman touched on putting in his press conference on Monday.
“We’ve got to make more putts. Whether that’s going for par-fives in two and trying to get up and down or just making more putts on the putting green, we’ve got to work hard.”
After taking two fourth-place finishes this season and most recently, an eighth-place finish, the Bruins are poised to make a run at the leader board. They realize, however, that it’s still early in the season.
“We’re all very competitive and we have high expectations for ourselves but at this time of the year, we’re trying to get as prepared as we can for the post season. We’re not happy at all with an eighth-place finish but we’re not discouraged by it,” said Widegren, a freshman from Sweden.
None of the Bruins have played at Pelican Hill but being right on the coast, it could bring lots of wind, something UCLA struggled with at their last tournament in Hawaii. Freeman said that the Bruins are up to the challenge.
“No matter what the golf course presents, you have to be able to meet that challenge. I think these guys understand that and they’re going to be working hard to establish themselves as a great golf team,” Freeman said.
There will be a practice/college amateur round on Saturday and the tournament will be played Sunday through Tuesday and features a field of quality teams, including No. 6 Washington, No. 13 Tennessee, and No. 15 Arizona State. This stacked field is a welcome break for the Bruins though as this will be the first tournament of the season in which the team will not see the top two teams in the country, Stanford and Oklahoma State.
Freeman seems to have a formula figured out to close the deal.
“We really need to understand what it’s going to take for us to get up in the last nine holes,” he said. “And establish ourselves as the leader.”