This weekend, the forecast calls for clear weather littered with a few clouds in the Bay Area, but coach Carrie Forsyth expects the Stanford University Golf Course to be drenched.
This weekend, the No. 3 UCLA women’s golf team heads to Palo Alto for its second tournament of the year, the Stanford Pepsi Invitational.
“(The course has) gotten three and a half inches of rain for the last 24 hours, so it’s going to be really wet and muddy, and the course is going to play quite long because of that, unless they make some adjustments to the tees,” Forsyth said.
However, Forsyth said that it was beneficial that the team played in similar conditions last month, when the Bruins placed second at the Mason Rudolph Invitational hosted by Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn. In fact, heavy rain and thunderstorms forced cancellation of round two of the event.
“The good news is that when we played at Vanderbilt, they had just gotten about 12 straight days of rain, so the course was wet and muddy,” Forsyth said. “This may be very similar to that. We’ve basically got that under our belt. We’ve played in (those conditions), so we’ll see.”
The Bruins will look to senior Sydnee Michaels, who tied for second place at the Mason Rudolph Invitational, to lead them at Stanford this weekend.
“Sydnee has been playing great, she played awesome at Vanderbilt,” Forsyth said. “So that’s been fun to see her really feel good about her game again and play strong.”
Sophomores Stephanie Kono and Brianna Do, junior Glory Yang and freshman Tiffany Lua join Michaels on the team’s lineup this weekend. Redshirt junior Lalita Boonnoppornkul will also travel to Stanford to compete individually.
“We have to be the team that we are,” Forsyth said. “At the end of the day, we are a really solid team, solid ball-striking, everybody has been keeping up play really well. Overall, we have as a team great short game, that’s always important. If you have that, you’re always going to be a competitor.”
Michaels, who placed fourth in the event last year, led the Bruins to capture UCLA’s first victory in the tournament, previously known as Stanford Intercollegiate.
“It was a great win,” Forsyth said. “We’ve been to Stanford many times and had not won up there … until we did last year. That was a real treat, and it felt really good to have a great tournament at Stanford. It’s obviously a different year, and the conditions are going to be completely different this year given the weather. We’ve got a great team, and we’ll always be in contention.”