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  UCLA Sports Info. Brad Sherfy

By Pauline Vu

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

During talks with the members of the men’s golf team after their tournaments, there are certain phrases that tend to come out more often than the usual rhetoric athletes give.

“Coach said ...”

“Then Sherfy said ...”

“According to Coach ...”

The men’s golfers have absolute faith in the experience and advice of their coach, Brad Sherfy.

But that’s probably because he’s given them good reason to trust him.

Last weekend at the NCAA West Regionals, the team came upon a golf course with the highest rough (the grass surrounding the fairway) they’d ever seen.

The players’ golf instincts told them to take out their drivers and just hammer the balls far, like usual.

Sherfy’s golf instinct told him that his team needed to take out their irons and steadily make their way through the course.

So that’s what Sherfy – a sixth-year UCLA coach and a veteran of four U.S. Opens – told his team to do. That trick ended up being what took the Bruins to an NCAA Championship-qualifying sixth-place finish.

“He basically got us through Regionals. If we were just out there, wandering on our own, I don’t think we would’ve gotten through,” junior Parker McLachlin said.

McLachlin laughs when asked to talk about his coach.

“Coach is a funny guy. He’s 45, but at heart, he’s 18,” he said. “He’ll have his moments where he’ll come out of his conservativeness and be really funny.”

One thing McLachlin and sophomore Travis Johnson both mentioned is Sherfy’s penchant for telling stories.

“When we’re on trips he can keep us at dinner for hours. He tells us stories all day long,” Johnson said, and recounted one of those stories:

One time, Sherfy was playing on the European tour in Italy and got lost. He found the course just five minutes before his round started and happened to be driving by the first tee when he saw his group. Sherfy stopped the car, grabbed his tee, ball and driver, and ran onto the course. He teed off so that he wouldn’t be penalized, ran back to the car to put his golf shoes and visor on, then caught up with his group out on the fairway.

That story is just one example of his wide golf experience.

“I think he’s one of the best coaches in the country as far as all the experience he has,” Johnson said. “He’s played on the Euro, Asian, American, Canadian tours – you name it, he’s played it. He’s won over 80 professional tournaments and he’s played in 10 majors. That’s quite a resume.”

The true freshmen, according to McLachlin, are “just in awe of Coach, as they should be because Coach really has a lot of wisdom to offer.”

Sherfy, however, is humble about his teaching talents.

“It’s what I’ve done my whole life, so I just have some level of expertise at it,” he said in an understatement. “It seemed like a good thing to do.”

His coaching philosophy is simple: if you work hard, your talent will increase and you will be allowed to contribute to the team.

“You gotta out-work the next guy, that’s the bottom line,” Sherfy said. “There’s a lot of people with a lot of talent. If you’re out there beating balls when they’re out there on the beach, then eventually you’re gonna pass them up.

“That’s the philosophy: be prepared when you go to the event.”

This philosophy ties into his worst moment in coaching. When asked to name that moment, Sherfy refers to last year, when players often missed practices and weight room training and talked about each other behind their backs. Work ethic and team chemistry was at an all-time low.

“In general last year was tough. There was a lot of turmoil,” Sherfy said.

Much of the ill will, according to Johnson and McLachlin, came from a few central figures who made up the bulk of the veteran experience on the team. So after the season ended, Sherfy made a tough decision – to just get rid of them.

“I’d imagine it’d be hard, as a coach, to boot off three seniors-to-be,” Johnson said. “You’d be worried about how your underclassmen perform the following year, but he had pretty high faith in us.”

Conversely, one of Sherfy’s best moments in golf has to do with this year’s team and its stride in recent weeks. A few weeks ago, after a season of mediocre play and with a West Regionals bid still in doubt, Sherfy challenged the team.

He recalled telling his team of one junior, two sophomores and two freshmen, “Okay guys, you’re young but you’re not that young anymore. You’ve all played for a whole year, so now it’s time and if you don’t get it done now you’re just gonna be sitting at home.”

At the following tournament, the U.S. Intercollegiates, the Bruins placed third in a challenging field. Right after, they played respectably at Pac-10 Championships and following that, had their West Regionals triumph.

“Them responding to that (speech), that would probably be the best moment,” Sherfy said. “They responded to the challenge.”

Even bigger than that, they responded to their coach.