W. golf: Women’s golf dominates competition in Hawaii

The UCLA women’s golf team has seen a lot of leaderboards in its time.

But never one like this.

Upon completing the third and final round of the Kent Youel Invitational in Kapolei, Hawaii, on Wednesday evening, the Bruins gathered around the 18th hole not knowing exactly how each individual golfer finished.

When they finally got the chance to take a peak at the leaderboard, not only did it confirm that UCLA virtually walked away with the tournament title, it established that the three best individual performers all were toting Bruin emblazoned golf bags.

Freshman Amie Cochran, junior Susie Mathews and senior Charlotte Mayorkas finished 1-2-3 respectively in a field of 79 players, something coach Carrie Forsyth doesn’t recall ever happening before.

“We have been very close sometimes,” Forsyth said. “But having three players, wow.”

The only team to survive the Kapolei Golf Course on the island of Oahu under-par, No. 3 UCLA strolled to an easy 19-shot victory with a 5-under par team total. But though the team as a whole played as well as it has all fall, it may have been the individual performances that stole the spotlight. The brightest of those performances came from Cochran, one of the most heralded recruits in the country last year. Even though Cochran double-bogeyed her final hole of the tournament Wednesday, she still walked away as the individual medallist, posting a 54-hole score of 4-under par. She bested her teammate Mathews by a single shot.

The victory is only the first that Forsyth expects out of her prized freshman to accumulate during her collegiate career.

“To have a win like that early in her career, that’s awesome for her,” said Forsyth of Cochran.

But the freshman had a lot of help in leading the Bruins to an easy rout of the competition. Mayorkas’ 3-under par 69 in the first round of the competition, which tied for the lowest score of the tournament, staked UCLA to an early lead it would never relinquish. Sophomore Hannah Jun also joined in on the fun, posting a top-10 finish by tying for ninth place at 4-over par. With four players vying for the individual title, Bruin golfers were not only competing against the field, they were competing against each other.

“We came into the day with a 15-shot lead; that’s sort of hard to blow,” Forsyth said. “The team competition had taken care of itself. To be competing against your own teammates introduced a weird dynamic.”

But it was a dynamic that pushed her golfers to compete even harder. Up until this point in the season, the defending champions were still searching for their first win of the year. But even before this tournament began, the team had a feeling it would find its game on the sandy beaches of Hawaii.

“I have a sense from the girls that they expected to win this tournament,” Forsyth said. “We came into it thinking if we didn’t win, then there was something definitely wrong.”