As defending NCAA champions, UCLA women's golf team feels pressure, excitement for upcoming year
Junior Tiffany Lua helped the women’s golf team to an NCAA championship last year.
Credit: UCLA Athletics
By Manny Redruello
Sept. 15, 2011 12:46 p.m.
Sophomore Ani Gulugian stood on the edge of the 18th green, watching in anticipation as junior Tiffany Lua lined up what would be the last putt of the Bruins’ 2010-2011 season.
When Lua’s putt finally dropped, Gulugian and the rest of the Bruins stormed the green in frenzied excitement ““ they had just won UCLA’s 107th national championship.
“It was kind of surreal, we were all shaking,” Gulugian said.
“It was very emotional because we all worked really hard throughout the entire year, and then at the end, when we realized we had won, there were no words to describe the feeling we were feeling.”
Heading into this year with a No. 1 preseason ranking, five golfers ranked in Golfweek’s Top 50, a team that only lost one player from last year’s championship roster and a coach in Carrie Forsyth who has won two national championships during her time at UCLA, expectations are high.
The challenge for the 2011-2012 Bruins will be to live up to those expectations and deliver another championship to Westwood.
Forsyth has taken a proactive approach in managing those expectations, making sure to let her team know that their performance, not their ranking, define how good they are.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to have lots of conversations about it,” said Forsyth. “It’s great to be considered a great team, but the rankings don’t mean anything until you actually earn the ranking through your performance and your play.”
That walk-the-walk mentality has taken root in the minds of her golfers.
Lua, now a junior who finished in a tie for fourth place as an individual at the NCAA Championship, echoed a similar statement when asked about this season’s expectations.
“Pressure is what we make of it “¦ we’re all just going to work hard and focus on our own games and our own improvements,” said Lua, who has been working on her short game throughout the summer.
Lua said that she’s seen at least two teammates at every tournament she’s played in this summer, making it seem as if the season never ended.
In addition to seeing their teammates, Bruin golfers were likely to see Forsyth at their summer tournaments.
The coach is often able to keep in touch with her current golfers while recruiting future Bruins at the same tournaments.
That recruiting has netted two new Bruins who are expected to contribute right away, Erynne Lee and Kyle Roig.
“I think they’re both going to play quite a bit. They are very, very good players,” Forsyth said. “We have more depth this year on the team than we did last year, so that’s a good thing.”
Lee and Roig will likely make their debuts at the upcoming Fall Preview on Sept. 23, the Bruins’ first tournament of the year.
Seniors Brianna Do and Stephanie Kono will both be absent from Bruins’ lineup, as they will be qualifying for next summer’s Futures Tour that weekend.
With their first tournament just around the corner, Gulugian is confident in her team’s chances for success this season.
“We all worked very hard this summer,” Gulugian said. “We all have a lot of confidence, everybody played well this summer coming into the season.”
Gulugian and her teammates have every right to be confident. They are the defending national champions and are coming off strong summer performances in tournaments across the country.
But the Bruins cannot let that confidence turn into complacency.
“It’s nice to be considered highly, but it doesn’t mean anything right now and we know that,” Forsyth said.
As long as Forsyth is leading the Bruins, there’s no reason they can’t be No. 1 when it counts the most ““ on the 18th green of the 2012 NCAA Championship.
