Standing alongside the 18th green at the conclusion of last
year’s NCAA Championships, UCLA men’s golf coach O.D.
Vincent peered over at the leaderboard for one final time.
What it confirmed was much more than just a score.
It signified the end of one era, and the emergence of
another.
His team’s five-shot lead entering the final round, along
with its national title hopes, had been washed away in the steady
Virginia rain.
The four seniors whom Vincent had relied on to climb atop the
collegiate golfing world had all hit their final shots as
Bruins.
But for Vincent, thoughts about the 2005 season had already
begun to creep in, within minutes of the championship ending, and a
harsh reality was settling there.
Though he had only been UCLA’s coach for two years, his
program was already approaching its first crossroads.
“Without the four seniors, we’re going to take a
step backward before we can take steps forward,” Vincent said
a year ago.
The upcoming season is underway, and the Bruins have already
backtracked. Last week, UCLA finished more than 30 shots back of
Oklahoma State and placed 13th at the TaylorMade Big Island Classic
in Hawaii, the worst finish of a Bruin team fielding its best
lineup under Vincent’s tutelage.
While the Bruins weren’t expected to be among the
nation’s elite at the beginning of the season, not being in
contention at the end of a tournament eats away at Vincent’s
competitive spirit. Instilling that mindset into this year’s
freshman and sophomore-laden lineup figures to be one of
Vincent’s biggest challenges.
“It hasn’t been fun to this point, it’s been a
lot of work,” Vincent said. “Having a chance for being
in the hunt is what we play for. When we’re so far back we
can’t see the top, that’s not much fun. I just want to
keep the same standards that we’ve had the last two years.
The (young players) have high expectations, and so do I, and
I’m not going to let up on those. We can’t go backward
anymore.”
Considering UCLA’s recent success over the last two years,
it’s easy to see why Vincent is reluctant to see his program
slide.
In the last two seasons, the “Fab Four” of Steve
Conway, Travis Johnson, John Merrick, and Roy Moon led the Bruins
to an astounding 13 tournament victories and a third and second
place finish at the NCAA Championships.
That success has resulted in Vincent’s ability to bring in
two tremendous recruiting classes, solidifying UCLA’s future
as an emerging collegiate golfing powerhouse.
But with the “Fab Four” gone, Vincent will look to
four new faces to keep the program afloat this season. Sophomores
Chris Heintz and Peter Campbell, as well as freshmen Daniel Im and
Kevin Chappell, will join senior John Poucher, UCLA’s only
returning starter with significant experience, as part of the
Bruins’ regular starting lineup.
“It’s definitely a change of the guard,” said
Poucher, this year’s team captain.
Though Vincent believes this could be the most naturally
talented group of players he’s ever coached, he admits their
inexperience is glaring. Aside from Poucher, who was an integral
member of the last two championship runs, the rest of the starting
lineup had combined to play in only three collegiate tournaments
coming into this season.
“For sure this is the most inexperienced team I’ve
ever coached,” said Vincent with a chuckle. “By a long
shot.”
“Even though we’re some of the top recruits in the
country, we don’t have the experience,” said Im, one of
the nation’s top recruits. “We just have to overcome
that. We have to start acting like All-Americans.”
Because of the Bruins’ youth, Vincent has seen a lot of
his energy and time being spent on teaching his players off the
course, instead of on it. Whereas he’d prefer to spend a
majority of his coaching on swing techniques and short-game
strategy, the Bruin coach has had to deal with issues such as
punctuality and his players showing up in the wrong attire.
“We’re spending a lot more time on things that
you’d think people would have figured out already,”
Vincent said.
“When you spend a lot of time doing those things, then you
can’t work on the things that are more important on the golf
course. So that’s slowed us down, but we’re not going
to get ahead of ourselves. We’re going to go from A to Z in
that order.”
It’s that patient approach that has marked Vincent’s
tenure in Westwood thus far.
While he will not allow the team to use its inexperience as an
excuse for poor results, the coach does believe that a slow and
pragmatic approach is the proper way to build a foundation for
success.
So even though it may not be fun now, it’s not the regular
season by which the Bruins will be judged.
Instead, where they stand on the afternoon of June 4, the date
of the final round of this year’s NCAA Championships, will
act as the barometer for whether this season will have been a
successful one.
“When the tournaments get bigger and there’s more on
the line, then it’ll be much more fun,” Vincent
said.
“But if we’re not one of the last groups at the end
of the year, it’s not going to be successful.”