M. golf: Bruins take fourth in NCAA Regionals

While they didn’t bring home their third consecutive NCAA
West Regional Championship, this year’s Bruins cannot be
faulted for a lack of tenacity.

Sitting in a precarious tie for seventh place going into the
final round, the No. 14 UCLA men’s golf team fired its lowest
score of the tournament, a collective 1-over par 281 on Saturday,
to surge into a tie for fourth-place and solidify an NCAA
Championship berth.

“Obviously the most important thing is finishing in the
top ten so you have a chance to compete in the national
championships,” said third-year Bruin coach O. D. Vincent,
whose fifth-seeded team had few familiar faces from the team that
had won the regionals two years running.

After shooting an 8-over par 288 both Thursday and Friday, the
Bruins needed to record a low round Saturday, leading the 11th
place team by just four strokes.

And on what UCLA senior captain John Poucher described as
“the most pressure-packed day of golf all year,” it was
the Bruins’ two freshmen who led the way at the Stanford Golf
Course in Palo Alto.

Both Kevin Chappell and Daniel Im, UCLA’s top two overall
finishers, shot a 1-under par 69 on the final day, which allowed
the Bruins to record the lowest score on Saturday.

Chappell finished the competition in a tie for second place at
3-under par 207, while Im tied for 25th at 5-over par 215.

Chappell, who has delivered the Bruins’ best golf over the
past two tournaments, downplayed his second place finish, although
he did admit there was a lot of pressure riding on the young team
playing from a bubble position.

“We were all nervous,” he said. “We all used
the nervousness in positive ways to help us and we all stepped up
our games and played well today.”

Vincent and others were less restrained in praising the
freshman.

“I’m so proud of Kevin, he was so steady,”
Vincent said. “In the clutch, he just hit the shots whenever
he needed to, he looked so composed.

“Both him and Daniel, being so successful as freshmen, are
going to do nothing but get better from here.”

Poucher, who was the Bruins’ third-best finisher at 7-over
217, was similarly elated with the performance that the freshman
gave.

“I knew they had it in them,” he said.
“That’s their talent level, that’s their
potential, and they are getting their chance to shine.”

Poucher shot a 1-over par 71 Saturday, and sophomore Joakim
Renstrom, who struggled the first two days of the tournament,
turned in a 2-over par 72 to finish out the Bruins’ scoring.
Sophomore Chris Heintz’s 4-over par 74 was not counted
towards the team’s score.

The team will now take a brief respite before traveling to
Owings Mills, Md. on June 1 to compete in the NCAA
Championships.