Men’s golf places 18th at The Goodwin with season-best performance from freshman

STANFORD — Despite a bottom-half team finish, one Bruin scored a season-best performance.

UCLA men’s golf finished in 18th place in a field of 28 teams at The Goodwin in Stanford where freshman Pablo Ereño Perez recorded his first top-15 finish of the season. Finishing with 13 birdies, including an eagle on the opening hole, Ereño Perez carded a 6-under-par total at the tournament held from Thursday to Saturday.

Ereño Perez said his 14th-place performance boosted his confidence, especially after adjusting from the European to American style of golf courses.

“I feel like this tournament has told me that I am not that far away from playing really good,” Ereño Perez said. “After this, I gained confidence and trust in myself.”

Coach Derek Freeman added that the greens are faster and more complex in the United States, making it a difficult transition for the Spaniards coming into the lineup.

“The courses in Europe are narrower and a little shorter,” Ereño Perez said. “The most different part is that the pins are in easier positions. … Here in the U.S., the pins are in a lot of slopes.”

Ereño Perez’s fellow countryman, redshirt sophomore Alvaro Mueller-Baumgart Lucena, finished tied for 99th with a score of 8-over par.

Sandwiched between the pair of Spaniards was graduate student Eddy Lai. Lai finished in a share of 35th with a 1-under par total after opening the final round with a stretch of 11 consecutive pars. The graduate student finished the day with fifteen pars, a birdie and two bogeys.

“I hit a lot of really good putts today (Saturday), but they just didn’t go in,” Lai said. “I didn’t hit very good third shots on the par 5’s when I was already next to the green, and the par 5’s out there are really easy. You really need to try to make birdie on those.”

Lai was the lone graduate student in the lineup, with graduate student Devon Bling missing the remainder of the season after sustaining a wrist injury.

As the lone upperclassman starter, Lai said these tournaments mark a learning process for his young teammates.

“They’re playing so much right now as freshmen that sometimes it might just be the inexperience that doesn’t allow them to play well,” Lai said. “That’s just part of their growth in college.”

Rounding out the lineup were freshmen Omar Morales and Evan Chien. Morales carded a total of 9-over par to finish in a tie for 108th, while Chen shot a total of 18-over par, good for a share of 131st place.

As a team, the most strokes were lost on the par 3’s and par 5’s. The Bruins finished third to last on each of those categories. However, while the blue and gold finished 21-over par on par 3’s, Ereño Perez scored under par on such holes en route to his season-high performance.

“A lot of times, young players get too aggressive,” Freeman said. “They try to hit it close when they don’t need to. The greens aren’t that large, so if you hit the middle of the green, you should be okay. When you have a mid-iron or long iron in approach on a par 5, you need to put it in position where you could score, and our guys didn’t do that.”

The Bruins’ next event comes April 15 at the Thunderbird Collegiate in Phoenix, Arizona.