The old man and the team

  NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Junior Parker
McLachlin has had to mature quickly as co-captain in order
to serve as a role model for the team’s younger players.

By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Parker McLachlin is the old man on the men’s golf
team.

He’s still a junior, but as a redshirt, that’s old
compared to the two true sophomores and two true freshmen who make
up the traveling squad. Everyone agrees that McLachlin’s the
most mature member of the team.

Of course, that might not be too hard considering he’s
teammates with Travis
“smack-my-teammate-in-the-back-for-fun” Johnson and
Johnny “pretend-to-be-the-PA-system-on-an-airplane”
Merrick, but still, it’s work having to be the mature guy on
the squad.

Especially when you weren’t expecting to be.

After last season, three would-be seniors were taken off the
team. That left only two veterans: Steve Wagner, who only went on
one trip in the fall, and McLachlin.

“So I was basically the old man on every trip,”
McLachlin said, “which is nice in some respects because I get
my own room and stuff, but it’s extra responsibility. I know
that everything I do, the younger guys look at.”

When he was named co-captain, McLachlin had to improve his
attitude off the course.

“I thought I would have one more year of being the guy who
screws around a little bit and gets away with stuff. Then coach got
rid of all those guys and it was like, “˜Now I gotta be more
mature and now I gotta watch what I say,'” he said.
“It totally changed the way I had to act. It changed my role
on the team.”

According to Head Coach Brad Sherfy, “He’s been
through more of the wars; lots of the kids look to him for
leadership.”

Suddenly, with his four years of experience at UCLA, McLachlin
became the guy who “the kids,” as he calls the freshmen
on the team, came to for guidance about golf, girls and grades.

And suddenly, with his three-years experience as an active
collegiate golfer, McLachlin became a co-captain and the guy who
leads his team on the course.

At last weekend’s NCAA West Regionals, where the top 10
teams qualify for NCAA Championships, there were two main factors
that helped the Bruins to a sixth-place finish and an NCAA berth:
Sherfy’s wisdom and McLachlin’s experience.

It was Sherfy who told the Bruins how to hit and what clubs to
use so that they could play the tough course smartly. It was
McLachlin who told them they had to play as a team to make NCAA
Championships.

He would know. In his freshman year the Bruins missed the
championships by two strokes. In his sophomore year, McLachlin
missed the championships as a individual by one stroke. He was
tired of missing the NCAA tournament.

“The advice I gave to our guys was that it’s really
difficult to make it through regionals as an individual, so
don’t go out there and play stupid,” he said. “I
stressed that if we’re gonna make it to nationals,
we’re gonna make it as a team.”

He told the Bruins not to play aggressively or individually, to
suck it up a little, swallow their pride and take it for the
team.

They did. And they made it.

According to teammate Travis Johnson, McLachlin keeps the team
in line.

“He’s not afraid to express his feelings to get you
back on track,” he said. “If any of us are doing
anything stupid, he’ll be the first one to let somebody
know.”

When some of the younger players tried to squeeze in an extra
round on a course when they knew they weren’t supposed to,
McLachlin reminded them that they’d get caught. When some of
the guys thought about skipping tutoring for the third time in a
row, McLachlin warned them that they would get kicked out of
tutoring.

“He knows the system a lot better than we do,”
Johnson said.

Johnson adds that McLachlin leads the team in another way:
through sheer competitiveness.

“No matter if we’re playing a practice round, a
qualifying round or just a friendly game of pool, he does not like
to lose,” Johnson said. “Even if it’s
frickin’ badminton.”

His competitiveness and maturity came through big for the team
at West Regionals. In the second round, McLachlin was fourth on the
team and playing poorly. Johnson was fifth and playing even more
poorly, so they both knew McLachlin’s round would count (in
college golf the highest and worst round out of five players is
dropped). McLachlin came to the 17th hole and double-bogeyed it. He
went to the par-5 18th hole knowing that he had to pull through
““ and managed to eagle the hole with only three strokes.

“He shot 73 or 74, but that’s a lot better than 75
or 76, which is what it was looking like,” Johnson said.

Over the summer Johnson called McLachlin weekly when McLachlin
went home to Hawaii. He still remembers how stunned he was by
McLachlin’s work ethic.

According to Johnson, when asked what he did that day, McLachlin
would answer something like, “I played nine holes for five
hours, I hit for two more hours, I putted for four hours, then I
played another nine holes, then…”

“It was like, “˜Jesus, does it stay light that long
out there?'” Johnson said.

But Johnson shouldn’t be surprised. Because of what
he’s gone through in the past year, McLachlin is worlds away
in terms of maturity from the person he was four years ago when he
was redshirting his first year at school. That year McLachlin hit
just one bucket of balls. Total.

Now he thinks he’s slacking if he doesn’t hit 10
buckets a week.