No. 5 men’s golf captures conference championship

Gavin Chanin
Published: Thursday, April 27, 2006

Seven months, 18 tournaments, 11 team titles and 954 holes later, the fifth-ranked UCLA men’s golf team has satisfied half of its season goals by winning the Pac-10 Championship.

Only when the NCAA Championship starts on May 31 will the Bruins have the chance to complete the sweep. For now, they will gladly settle with one-for-one.

In dominant fashion, the Bruins held the lead after each of the tournament’s four rounds and finished 12 strokes better than second-place Washington on Wednesday afternoon.

After the third round, only Washington was within striking distance of UCLA. But Washington, the defending Pac-10 champions, only managed to score a 12-over par six strokes over the Bruins in that round.

“It feels great,” UCLA coach O.D. Vincent said. “It’s such a tough tournament to win and this year I think we felt some added pressure, because we’ve had such a good year that we really felt like we should be the deserving champions.”

“We just needed to go out and do it, and there were a lot of teams gunning for us (but) everybody was holding in there and playing solid,” Vincent said. UCLA sophomore Daniel Im took home the tournament championship at 7-under par, narrowly beating out Arizona State’s all-American Niklas Lemke by one stroke in the final round.

“It was pretty intense for a while because I wasn’t sure where I was standing,” Im said. “He played really well today until he bogeyed and then double bogeyed.”

“Then (coach Vincent) told me I was leading by one, which got me through the last little bit,” Im said.

Im has now become part of a UCLA tradition – in the five Pac-10 Championships the Bruins have won, they have always managed to take home the individual championship as well.

While it sounds common to win the individual and team championship, it doesn’t always work out that way, and for Im, it almost didn’t.

Im held a one-shot lead over Lemke throughout the last round until he hit hole 12, which he bogeyed. He then bogeyed holes 13 and 14, giving Lemke a two-stroke lead.

Im’s five other teammates also fared well.

Junior Chris Heintz finished tied for sixth at 1-under par and top-ranked Pac-10 player Eric Flores finished tied for 15th at 5-over par.

Kevin Chappell (+6), James Lee (+7), and Lucas Lee (+9) checked in for solid finishes and ended the tournament in 17th, 21st and 26th place, respectively.