No. 3 women’s golf to co-host Bruin Wave Invitational with Pepperdine
By Emma Coghlan
Feb. 28, 2011 3:19 a.m.
The UCLA women’s golf team goes into its second competition of the spring season with confidence and the skills needed to succeed on the course.
Starting today, UCLA and Pepperdine will co-host the second annual Bruin Wave Invitational. Fifteen teams will compete over the next three days at the Valley Course at the Robinson Ranch Golf Club in Santa Clarita.
Two of the teams competing this week are ranked in Golf Week’s top 10, and four are in the top 25: No. 3 UCLA, No. 10 Arizona, No. 23 Pepperdine and No. 25 Texas. UCLA will be the highest-ranked team at the event, as last year’s winner, No. 2 USC, will not participate this season. The Bruins placed third in the event last year.
The course plays on the Bruins’ areas of strength: accuracy and putting. Coach Carrie Forsyth describes the course as “target golf,” making the golfer rely on her ability to be specific with shots and to keep the ball in play. If the player lacks this ability, she will face trouble, because one bad shot will send the ball straight into the bushes. Though other teams excel more in their long game, that skill is less important on this course.
There are always factors that the players cannot control, the primary one of these being weather. The Bruins are certainly hoping that the conditions go their way; there is a chance of rain this week, which could have negative ramifications for UCLA. Though most students appreciate UCLA’s year-round sunny weather, for the golf team, the constant sunshine can be troublesome at times.
“The challenge that we face at UCLA is that we don’t get a lot of bad weather for practice,” Forsyth said. “It’s usually pretty nice, whereas if you’re in Oklahoma, if you’re playing back East, you’re playing in rain, you’re playing in conditions much more often than we do. … How do we practice for things like that?” Forsyth said.
In past years, bad conditions have not had as much of an effect on the team. According to Forsyth, the Bruins got caught in awful weather last season at a competition and yet managed to pull out a win. But in the team’s most recent outing, at the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge earlier this month, the weather became wet and rainy on the last day, causing UCLA to drop from a first-place finish after the second round to third place after the final round.
Although the prospect of less-than-ideal conditions can be daunting, the most the team can do is adjust its game plan as best it can and keep on playing.
Putting the matter of weather aside, Forsyth remains confident.
“(This year’s team is) a bit different; we have some different players in the lineup,” she said. “I think we’ll have a really good finish this year. I think we’ll play better than we did last year.”
