With just one tournament remaining before the Pac-10 Championships, the UCLA men’s golf team really felt like it had a chance to gain some momentum last weekend at the Western Intercollegiate at Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz.
Keeping with the trend of late, the No. 5 Bruins missed that chance, taking second place in a relatively weak field of teams that only included one other top-10 team: No. 4 Oregon. The Ducks took home their second trophy in as many weekends, finishing seven strokes ahead of the Bruins.
“We really feel like we had an opportunity to win, we had an opportunity to play well and we just didn’t take care of what we needed to,” Coach Derek Freeman said. “Oregon played better than us and we made too many mental mistakes that cost us the tournament.”
The rest of the field was merely playing for third place behind the two Pac-10 powerhouses. UC Irvine finished in third, 34 shots behind the Bruins.
Sophomore Alex Shi Yup Kim finished in a tie for fourth place at 207 (-3). Kim has really come on as of late for the Bruins, finishing with the best score on the team the past two weeks.
Freshman Pedro Figueiredo finished tied for seventh at 209 (-1) while sophomore Gregor Main finished in a tie for tenth at 211 (+1). Freshman Pontus Widegren finished tied for 14th at 213 (+3) and fellow freshman Mario Clemens rounded out the Bruins’ scoreboard in a tie for 21st at 216 (6+). Junior Connor Driscoll, who was inserted into the lineup because the tournament’s format called for six players, did not have his score attributed to the team total as only the top five scores are counted. Oregon’s Eugene Wong won the individual title by three shots at 202 (-8).
“It’s kind of disappointing because I could have had better results based on the way that I played but I’m just going to have to learn from it,” said Figueiredo of his play in the tournament.
The Pasatiempo Golf Club gave a lot of the teams in the field fits, with scores of 60 and 80 over par showing up on the team leaderboard.
Widegren mentioned that his team’s short game really struggled.
“We did not play well enough around the greens,” Widegren said. “We didn’t putt well enough and we made too many three-putts. It’s a great golf course to play and it was a lot of fun playing it, it’s just sad that we couldn’t finish better,” Widegren said.
The Bruins will now have a week to prepare for the postseason as they prepare for the Pac-10 Championships at ASU’s Karsten Golf Course.
“We’ve got a really big week of preparation in front of us to get ready for the Pac-10 Championships so we’ve got to get ready,” Freeman said.