The No. 9 women’s golf team has high hopes and expectations going into the 21st annual Pac-10 Women’s Golf Championships hosted by the University of Washington.
Like the men’s golf team, the UCLA women have won five Pac-10 Championships, except the women are on a serious hot streak, having won three Pac-10 titles in a row. Going into next week, they are competing for what they hope will be their fourth consecutive title.
“I’m hoping for everything to click,” said senior Hannah Jun.
In order to do that, the Bruins will be hoping for a strong performance from sophomore Tiffany Joh.
“Mentally she’s really improving rapidly,” coach Carrie Forsyth said about Joh. “Physically, the girl’s got more talent than anybody. The girl’s the most talented player probably in the country, in terms of her physical ability, her swings, her ball striking capabilities; I mean, the girl’s really solid.”
Joh, an All-American, has had a consistent season, averaging 73.6 strokes per round. According to Forsyth, she has grown greatly as a golfer, but has extremely high standards for herself.
“She’s not growing as fast as she would like to,” Forsyth said.
Although the women’s team boasts All-American golfers, this season they have not been able to execute as well as they would like. One of the biggest reasons for this is the fact that the team has only six players, and therefore little room for lineup shifts. Four players have had to play in every match, while there was some competition for the fifth spot.
For the Pac-10 Championships, that spot was deservedly handed to junior Maiya Tanaka. Tanaka is one of the surprises for the women’s team.
“Maiya played a lot of junior ball,” Forsyth said. “She was actually interested in becoming part of the team a long time ago, but … it was 2004 (and) we had just won a national championship. I had squad full of great players and I didn’t want to bring in another player at that time.”
Tanaka earned the opportunity by lowering her average to 78.6. Moreover, at the last tournament in Arizona where the Bruins came in second, Maiya was able to score a career-best 73, showing signs of great improvement.
“She’s very competitive and she wants to do well,” Forsyth said. “She’s pretty aggressive out on the golf course. She goes after it. She’s not a fearful type of a player.”
The whole team is confident heading into the conference championships. Climbing out of a slump in midseason and coming in second in the Arizona tournament has given them confidence that they can win the tournament.
“They starting to see it now, they’re starting to believe it now,” Forsyth said.