Almost each and every night, Daniel Im loads his golf clubs into
the trunk of his Acura and makes the 10-minute drive down Westwood
Boulevard toward Rancho Park, the closest public driving range to
UCLA.
It’s a tradition that Im, currently a freshman on the
men’s golf team, started in high school in La Mirada and has
helped him become one of the best amateur players in the
country.
Yet, back in the fall quarter on those dark and usually lonely
evenings at Rancho, something was unmistakably different, something
he didn’t feel a year ago when he was in high school.
He wasn’t as confident.
He wasn’t as relaxed.
He wasn’t as focused.
Instead, Im says his mind usually wandered off onto the homework
he was neglecting or the responsibilities he wasn’t
fulfilling.
Easily distracted, his golf game quickly suffered, and Im found
himself in a cyclical trap of trying to do multiple things at once
and getting none of them done.
“I wasn’t hitting it well, so I went to practice to
get better, but on the other hand, I realized I was going to
freaking fail out of school if I didn’t do some of the
work,” said Im, who came dangerously close to becoming
academically ineligible after only his first quarter at UCLA.
“In the end, nothing was getting done.”
Though he is statistically the best player on the 14th-ranked
UCLA men’s golf team and is the only Bruin to win an
individual title this year, Im said he was not ready for college,
and his dramatically altered appearance, his recklessness, and his
dwindling commitment to golf proved it.
He looks back on the fall quarter wondering what might have
been, knowing that his choices before setting foot on campus set
back his development as a golfer and as a person.
“I totally lost it,” Im said. “When I got
here, I was struggling.”
Only five months removed from fall quarter, he credits his
struggles as a wide-eyed freshman for making him a more disciplined
and mature person, and he has taken a unique path to become one of
the up-and-coming leaders on the Bruin team.
And it all started when he cut his hair.
Peeling the orange
Standing befuddled on a golf course in New Mexico last July, Im
was lost.
His goal for that summer was to make a run at the U.S. Amateur
in August, the most prestigious amateur event in golf and certainly
within the grasp of one of the most talented amateurs in the
country.
Yet Im, one of the most sought-after recruits in the country,
didn’t make a run at the title. In fact, he didn’t even
survive the New Mexico qualifying site, leaving him not knowing
what to do next, given that he planned his whole summer around the
U.S. Amateur.
With an abundance of unexpected free time, Im’s decision
as to how to fill it would end up being costly.
“I took the whole month of August off, and I still regret
it,” Im said. “I would have played so much better in
fall if I had even practiced a little bit.”
Rather than honing his golf game in preparation for the fall
season, Im instead elected to put his passion on the back
burner.
Im made a series of brash decisions that he said hindered his
maturation. He amassed as many speeding tickets as broken tees and
then bleached his hair, which eventually turned into an
“ugly” orange and is conveniently displayed on the
cover of the men’s golf team’s media guide.
“Nobody liked it,” said sophomore Chris Heintz, who
has known Im for six years. “Everybody teased him about it.
He showed up the first day looking like a tiger, with this orange
and black “˜do.”
It all amounted to Im, who was slated to start college in only a
couple of weeks, being much further detached from his golf game
than when he was in high school.
“I didn’t know how to balance it,” Im said.
“It wasn’t the right way to handle coming into college.
I didn’t know what was coming.”
Frequently late to team meetings and often not dressed in the
proper team attire in the beginning, Im, like most freshman
golfers, was lost on the team concept.
“High school golf is so relaxed,” Heintz said.
“College is the only time golf is ever a team sport and it
takes some getting used to.”
That’s when teammate John Poucher, the lone senior on a
team comprised mainly of freshmen and sophomores, placed a phone
call to Im to ask him, among other things, to shape up and do
something about his “ridiculous” hair.
That night, Im went over to Poucher’s apartment, and not
the driving range, to let the senior shave his head, marking a
symbolic end to what had been a troubling and frustrating period
for the freshman.
“I wanted to get out from under there,” Im said.
“I just wanted to start fresh.”
And he did. In his first two collegiate events, still showing
off his orange hair, Im failed to crack the top 35 on the
leaderboard, stunning for someone with his golfing credentials and
acclaim.
But as soon as his hair returned to its natural color, so too
did his game.
Since Nov. 2, when he placed eighth at The Prestige, Im has been
UCLA’s best golfer, leading the Bruins in five of its seven
events and claiming the team’s lone individual championship
this season when he won the Southern Highlands with eye-popping
opening and closing rounds of 66 (6-under par) and 68 (4-under
par).
He was named the Pac-10 Golfer of the Month in March, and all
seemed back to normal.
Yet the events that had transpired within the last year still
kept Im in a state of fear.
Battling back
In high school, Im was the man to beat in Southern California.
He was named the Los Angeles Times Junior Player of the Year in
2003 and became accustomed to simply breezing past the field in
each tournament he entered.
So when he competed in his first collegiate tournament and saw
that he was no longer the best, Im was bewildered.
“I knew probably half of the college players in America
through junior tournaments, and I was sure I used to beat them all
the time,” Im said. “But now that I am here, all of a
sudden they’re so much better, and now we’re all the
same. That sort of confused me at the beginning of the
year.”
Im had no idea of the rigorous training many collegiate golf
players put their bodies through, something he wasn’t forced
to do in high school. He didn’t know why it was that
important to show up on time, or to have his shirt tucked in. All
that mattered to Im before coming to UCLA was that he knew how to
swing a golf club better than most anyone else who set foot on the
course.
His naivete earned him the nickname “Negative Three”
from his teammates, meaning Im acted his age, 19, minus three
years.
“The guys said I was like a freshman in high
school.”
While Im initially laughed it off, he took to heart that he
needed to make some changes, especially if he was ever going to
realize his aspirations of becoming a professional golfer.
Since the spring season began in February, Im has showed up to
each team meeting on time. He no longer tries to find excuses to
miss workout sessions.
And while he’s doing it to better himself and his game, he
also knows that after this year, he will be looked on to lead the
Bruins and is practicing now so he can set the example in the
future.
“I worked hard before, but I wasn’t working the
right way,” Im said. “Those little things add up, and
they should.”
Yet, as the Bruins are on the cusp of needing their best
performance of the year to advance to the NCAA Championships when
they play in the NCAA West Regional next week, Im says his mind
still wanders back to when his game, and his life, were adrift.
Even after winning his only tournament of the year back in
March, Im couldn’t take complete satisfaction in his
achievement, believing there was still a possibility his game could
relapse because of what happened in the fall.
“Yeah, I won the tournament, but I thought to myself, what
if I screwed up in the next tournament,” Im said. “What
if that happens again?”
While he does not know if and when he will regain full
confidence in his swing and his game to the point where he will rid
his mind of doubt, Im knows of only one way to get there.
And that’s by loading up his Acura at 8 p.m., and making
sure that nothing stands in the way of his golf game again.