Bruins put faith in Brad Sherfy’s experience, advice

  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.