SUNRIVER, Ore. “”mdash; With the conditions at their harshest and
the pressure at its highest, it was UCLA’s most inexperienced
tournament player who single-handedly kept the Bruins’
championship hopes alive to the bitter end.
And while freshman Amie Cochran, who sports a Superman head
cover on her driver, may not have saved the day for UCLA, she
certainly came close.
Despite a constant rain, a periodic hailstorm and temperatures
low enough that her hands went temporarily numb, Cochran still tore
apart the Meadows Course at the Sunriver Resort during
Friday’s final round.
The heralded freshman fired a flawless bogey-free 3-under par
68, the Bruins’ lowest round of the NCAA Championships, to
move all the way up to third on the leaderboard and finish as
UCLA’s highest finisher.
As Bruin coach Carrie Forsyth came up to congratulate her
freshman “rock star” after the round, it became
apparent that while UCLA may be losing a leader in senior Charlotte
Mayorkas, the team may have gained one in Cochran, who saved her
best performance of the year for the season’s last and most
important event.
“The entire year, I’ve matured so much, especially
these last two days as a player and a person,” Cochran
said.
At the beginning of the tournament, however, a top-five finish,
or even much less emerging as the Bruins’ best player,
appeared very unlikely for the Torrance native.
Stricken with a bad cold for the first two rounds, which was
only exacerbated by the miserable Oregon weather, Cochran succumbed
to physical and mental fatigue, shooting a very disappointing
8-over par 79 in Wednesday’s second round to put her well
back of the leaders.
Yet as quickly as she was ceding strokes the first two days,
Cochran wasted no time in making them up over the final two
rounds.
Knowing her team needed someone to post a low score for any
chance of winning, the freshman was the only Bruin to muster the
game to meet the challenge. Following her impressive 1-under par 70
Thursday with an even more courageous 3-under par 68 Friday,
Cochran claimed ownership of UCLA’s only under-par rounds of
the tournament.
“To shoot 1-under and 3-under is just amazing,”
Forsyth said.
And if it weren’t for an inconsistent putter and some
unfortunate bounces of the ball, Cochran’s final-round score
could have been even lower.
After converting a 20-foot birdie from the fringe on the par-3
4th hole, Cochran had a five-footer for birdie on the 5th, but slid
her ball past the hole.
Then on the back nine, after almost holing out for an ace on the
par-3 13th hole, Cochran’s eight-foot birdie putt lipped out,
as the freshman settled for par.
Yet how Cochran reacted to the few miscues in her round on
Friday is indicative of how much she’s grown in a single
season.
Earlier in the year, Cochran let missed opportunities stew in
her mind for several holes, which often took her out of her game.
Friday, the freshman simply shrugged off any transgressions,
shooting her second-best round of her young collegiate career.
“I’m so pleased with the progress she’s made
as a player, and she’s really on the verge of doing some
great things,” Forsyth said.
And though that progress and potential took some time to emerge,
Cochran used collegiate women’s golf’s most prestigious
venue to boldly announce that she has arrived on the college golf
landscape.
“It was exciting, scary and a whole bunch of
emotions,” said Cochran of her first NCAA championship
experience. “I had a lot of fun, and despite the outcome, am
glad to be on this team and look forward to hopefully becoming a
leader on this team.”