M. golf: 12th hole stymies Bruins, drops team to 2nd place

UCLA men’s golf coach O.D. Vincent had a blueprint for how
he thought the NCAA Championships would play out. In his mind, no
one single team would run away from the rest of the field, and no
one single hole could prove destructive enough to drown his
team’s championship hopes. For the first 65 holes of the
tournament at the Cascades Resort in Hot Springs, Va., the
championship held true to Vincent’s predictions. His Bruins
were in the mix, holding a one-shot lead over Cal with seven holes
to play, right where they wanted to be. Then came the dogleg-left
par-4 12th hole on Friday. The 12th, 476 yards of nasty par-4,
proved to be the undoing of the No. 5 UCLA men’s golf team.
“No. 12 was the nail in our coffin,” Vincent said.
“That was a really tough hole.” Junior John Poucher,
the first Bruin to come through the hole, was forced to hit his
third shot with his face stuck in a tree. He double-bogeyed.
Following Poucher was senior Steve Conway, who flared his tee shot
into the woods on the right and was forced to take a two-shot
penalty. He tripled-bogeyed. Senior John Merrick pushed his
approach shot to the hole into a greenside bunker. Merrick’s
ball sat like an egg in the sand, and consequently his bunker shot
sailed past the green. After a flubbed chip, Merrick three-putted
from 15 feet. He tripled-bogeyed. “I had a few hiccups here
and there,” Merrick said. “It was the toughest
conditions by far. It rained pretty much the whole day and never
stopped.” The team entered the hole with an 11-over par total
and left at 19-over par, its championship hopes having slipped
away. “We had to count a double and triple there, which is a
lot to absorb,” Vincent said. “A couple of bogeys there
would have been nice.” The Bruins were unable to recover.
“I knew it wasn’t close on the last few holes,”
senior Travis Johnson said. “You have to have your best game
““ you can’t just expect to walk through and win. Cal
played awesome, and we just didn’t have our best game
today.”

INDIVIDUAL TITLE: UNLV’s Ryan Moore took
the Cascades Course by storm to secure the individual championship.
Moore finished the championship at 13-under par, six shots ahead of
the renowned Bill Haas out of Wake Forest, son of PGA Tour star Jay
Haas. For UCLA, Johnson’s fifth-place finish was the highest
finish for a Bruin in 16 years. Johnson, who carried UCLA for the
majority of the championship, finished the 72-hole tournament at
3-under par. “Travis was our horse this week, and we rode him
in all the way, and we just came up short,” said senior Roy
Moon, UCLA’s next-highest finisher. Moon, who started in the
No. 5 position when the tournament began, finished in a tie for
10th place at 2-over par.

“˜FOUR-GONE’ CONCLUSION:
Friday’s final round signified the end of the collegiate
careers of the senior “Fab Four.” At least two of the
seniors, Johnson and Merrick, plan on testing their games at the
professional level. “I’ve got tears of sadness and
happiness,” Johnson said. “It’s tears of sadness
because everything came to an end. But I’m looking forward to
what the future may bring.”