Pac-10 title slips through UCLA’s fingers
Players start strong, but off day leaves them with 5th-place finish
COURTNEY STEWART Sophomore Travis Johnson and a teammate were awarded honorable mention at the Pac-10 Championships.
By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
They encouraged each other throughout the tournament by reminding themselves that they could leave the men’s golf Pac-10 Championships with fat rings on their fingers.
But in the end, encouragement wasn’t enough. The Bruins put themselves in contention to take the title in the first two rounds, but had an off day in the last two rounds to take fifth place overall with a four-round, 10-over-par score of 1430.
“(The finish was) not as I expected,” sophomore J.T. Kohut said. “After the tournament we played in Stanford last week, we all knew that we could win it, and we should’ve won it and we didn’t.”
Last week on the same course at U.S. Intercollegiates, the Bruins placed third out of 18 teams.
They opened the tournament strongly, shooting 357 in the first round and an 8-under par 347 in the second round.
“Going into the third and fourth round, we knew we could win, the way we were playing,” Kohut said.
But things went downhill from there. The Bruins instead shot 362 and 364 in the final rounds to put themselves out of title contention.
“We all seemed to have a letdown,” said freshman John Merrick. “It was contagious that day, for some reason.”
Merrick would know. He was in fifth place heading into the finals rounds (shooting 68 and 69 in the first two rounds), but shot 78 and 75 to slip to 34th place.
“I didn’t really get any breaks in the third round,” he said. “None of my putts were going in. I kinda lost concentration.”
On the third day Merrick was paired with Ricky Barnes of Arizona, who won the tournament individually.
“It was a great experience to play with an individual winner and see what his game was like,” Merrick said.
The Bruins fell behind teams they’ve rarely beaten all year, including tournament winner USC (1400 score), Arizona State (1404) and Arizona (1408).
“We didn’t quite play to our abilities,” Kohut said.
One bright spot was junior Parker McLachlin’s second round. He shot a 65, his lowest of the year.
Overall, sophomore Travis Johnson came in 12th with a score of 283, followed by McLachlin (19th, 285), Kohut (31st, 289), Merrick (34th, 290), and freshmen Steve Conway (37th, 292) and Roy Moon (49th, 296).
McLachlin and Johnson were named Pac-10 Honorable Mentions.
UCLA’s performance at the Pac-10 Championships doesn’t affect their NCAA placement. The Bruins have already clinched a spot in the NCAA West Regionals in two weeks, and not even a mediocre finish at Pac-10s can take that away.
But could pride and confidence have suffered a little?
“A little bit, yes,” Merrick said, “but not if we play the way we did the first couple days.”
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