En route to matching the school record of tournament victories in the season, the Bruins were riding a two-tournament win streak until a sixth-place finish in the PING/ASU Invitational snapped them back to reality.
This week, the No. 2 women’s golf team will travel to Northern California to play in the Pac-10 Championships as the team’s first event of the postseason.
“Everybody’s had some different stuff to do,” coach Carrie Forsyth said. “Some of them had to do some work on their swing, a lot of short game. We tried to play a lot to prepare.”
After shuffling the lineup all season, the team finally solidified it with the five highest-ranked players on the team. Freshman Stephanie Kono, sophomore Glory Yang, senior Tiffany Joh, sophomore Maria Jose Uribe and junior Sydnee Michaels will compete in Palo Alto this weekend.
Forsyth said that she wants the Bruins to play this tournament the way they play all others.
“It’s golf; the golf courses are different,” Forsyth said. “The desire to win is a little more in the front part of your mind, but we just want to treat it like every other event. We treat it seriously, and we play to win.”
UCLA last played at the Stanford Golf Course in the Stanford Intercollegiate in October. The Bruins won the tournament, recording 844 (-8) and beating USC by three shots and Stanford by 13.
Two of the teams the Bruins will compete against are No. 1 Arizona State and No. 3 USC.
UCLA has won the Pac-10 Championships five times. The Bruins won in 1990 and 1991 when Forsyth played for UCLA and again in 2004, 2005 and 2006 when Forsyth was coach.
Forsyth said that regardless of how UCLA plays, the Bruins will advance to the NCAA Regionals. They will not play in the West Region because ASU is hosting the tournament in the West.