Men’s golf peaks at a perfect time heading into the NCAA Championship, in which the team hopes to win title No. 108 for Westwood

For the UCLA men’s golf team, this is it. This is what the season comes down to. This is the NCAA Championships.

For the Bruins, the regular season was just a means of getting to Stillwater, Okla., home to Karsten Creek Golf Course, the location of the nationals.

Forget the four team victories in 12 starts and the No. 4 ranking the Bruins carry into the tournament. If UCLA is not on top of the leaderboard at the culmination of the championship, the season will have been a failure.

“(Our goal is) not to win 10 tournaments during the season and play (poorly) in the NCAA,” junior Alex Kim said in September. “Our goal is to gear our game for the NCAA and in the end, end up as champions.”

Starting today, the Bruins will have an opportunity to achieve that goal. Fresh off of a victory at the NCAA West Regional in which freshman Patrick Cantlay also picked up his fourth individual victory of the season, the Bruins will need as much momentum as possible if they are to take home UCLA’s 108th national championship.

Surely, the fact that the UCLA women’s golf team just won a national championship of its own also provides some extra motivation for junior Gregor Main and sophomores Pontus Widegren and Pedro Figueiredo, who, along with Kim and Cantlay, will represent the Bruins in Stillwater.

Securing a championship will not be easy, however. Karsten Creek Golf Course is Oklahoma State’s home course ““ the same Oklahoma State whose men’s golf program holds 10 national titles and is currently the No. 1 team in the nation.

The Bruins carry a No. 1 ranking of their own in Cantlay. Cantlay is the top golfer in the nation, despite this being his first year of collegiate competition.

And he appears to have reached the peak of his game at just the right time, as he destroyed the competition at the NCAA West Regional, where he beat the second-place golfer by an astounding six strokes.

“The guys are excited, and (the NCAA Regional victory) is going to give us momentum,” said coach Derek Freeman, who led the Bruins to their last national championship in 2008. “We’re excited about being able to go (to Oklahoma) and play well, which is what we’re looking to do.”

In Stillwater, Cantlay and the rest of the Bruins will have to compete against 156 of the nation’s top golfers, as well as 30 of the most talented teams.

The tournament, which runs today through Sunday, is played in the five-count-four format the first three days, before the top-eight teams culminate with three rounds of match play.

“I feel we have a really good team; we just won so we’re playing well at the right time of the season,” Figueiredo said.

Figueiredo is right ““ the Bruins do have a solid team and are peaking at just the right time.
If they can translate their talent and timing onto the links this week, don’t be surprised if they accomplish their goal and bring No. 108 back to Westwood.