The UCLA women’s golf team showed improvement this week after it finished, tied for second place at the Allstate Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Golf Championship after a discouraging performance at the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge about two weeks ago.
The Bruins tied for second with a collective score of 22-over par, sharing the standings with Florida.
LSU took first place with a score of 10-over par.
Senior Erynne Lee led the Bruins recording a one-under par for the entire tournament. She finished in third place for individual standings.
After a wild first round in which she finished with two-over par, Lee was dialed in for the rest of the tournament, scoring three-under par in the last two rounds.
“It’s important for us to have Erynne consistently shoot low scores,” said coach Carrie Forsyth. “She’s a great player, one of the best in the country, so it’s always crucial that she can go out there and play at her best.”
The story at Northrop Grumman was that the Bruins had to fight their way back up the standings in the last day.
However, the script was flipped this time. The Bruins were one shot back of first place LSU heading into the final round, and were tied for first heading into the back nine of the last round. They just couldn’t close the deal.
“We had an opportunity to win but we kind of struggled towards the end,” Lee said. “But overall, it wasn’t too bad of a performance for our team.”
The event was difficult for all teams as the last two rounds featured cold and windy conditions. The Bruins in particular struggled on the back nine of each round.
Sophomore Bronte Law, who won the individual title at Northrop, did not record a single birdie on the back nine during the tournament. Law finished tied for 12th place for individual standings.
“I struggled with the longer shots this week, and because it was windy, it was difficult to put into practice what I had prepared,” Law said. “(In regards to the back nine struggles,) for me, there was a lot of waiting time adding to the fact that it was cold, so it was a struggle to keep the same rhythm that I had on the front nines.”
Freshman Erin Choi faced some adversity as well, as she triple bogeyed and double bogeyed on two consecutive holes in the back nine of the last round. Choi ended the tournament tied for 17th with a score of nine-over par.
Junior Louise Ridderstrom finished the tournament with nine-over par, and freshman Lydia Choi ended the event with seven-over par. Both finished in 17th and 12th place, respectively.
Despite some seemingly discouraging scores in the final round, the Bruins were in the thick of the competition and will move on with some confidence.
“It’s massively important to see the team pull through when the conditions were not ideal because it shows great resilience,” Law said. “Being from California, the girls aren’t used to the weather so it’s definitely something we need to work on so that we can feel more comfortable if we’re put in that situation again.”