The No. 5 UCLA men’s golf team went to the Las Vegas desert in search of an oasis, but a first-place finish at the Southern Highlands Collegiate Masters turned out to be a mirage.
While they weren’t able to top the leader board, the Bruins’ score of 882 ( 18) over the weekend was good enough for a third-place finish.
“We played pretty consistent; of course, we want to win and came up short, but I don’t think any of us played too bad,” junior Pedro Figueiredo said.
UCLA’s high score can be attributed to mistakes made on the difficult Southern Highlands Golf Course, which held every team in the field to a finish over par.
“The golf course played really, really tough,” said junior Pontus Widegren, who tied for second on the individual leaderboard behind his 214 (-2).
“You had to put the ball in the right places and sometimes even when you hit good shots, you wouldn’t get rewarded for it.”
Its challenging greens were the most difficult aspect of the Southern Highlands Golf Course for UCLA.
For the Bruins, though, the problem wasn’t putting on the greens, but making approach shots that put them in position for lower scores.
“The greens are as firm as you can find anywhere in the world,” Figueiredo said. “They aren’t especially big and the pins are tucked into corners, so you had to be patient and accept that you wouldn’t hit toward the pin sometimes.”
UCLA was aided by the return of junior Mario Clemens, who made it onto the varsity team after winning an individual tournament.
In his first tournament in the varsity rotation since October, Clemens posted a score of 224 ( 8), the second best score on the team.
“Basically, my mindset going into it was that it was a qualifier, because if we win the tournament, we get into the next event,” said Clemens of the individual tournament.
“I had high expectations of myself going into the (individual) tournament, and it was nice to fulfill that.”
Although they weren’t able to win, the Bruins will use the experience of playing a strong field on a tough course as a tool of improvement.
“We have a good enough team to where we should be in contention every single event, so to not win is a disappointment,” Clemens said.
“At the same time, now we know what we need to work on and we have a tournament coming up, so we’ll be fine.”