Golf competes in finals
By Jack Ferdon
The Santa Clara women's and men's golf teams turned in a pair of last-place finishes at the West Coast Conference Championships.
While the women were looking up at the rest of the field from the get-go, the men's team - who were sitting in third place after the first round and fourth place after two rounds of the eight-team tournament - suffered through a Phil Michelson-like final round implosion in plummeting to last place.
Santa Clara followed team scores of 300 and 305, respectively, with an abysmal 326 on the last day of competition. It was the highest single-round score posted by any team during the tournament and 13 strokes worse than the next highest score.
The lone bright spot for the men was freshman Matt Klenz, who posted the lowest individual score for the Broncos with a first round 72, which is good enough for even of the Month for March and made the All-Conference team.
Overall, Santa Clara finished 71 strokes behind first-place Pepperdine, who are ranked No. 22 in the nation and whose top player, Michael Beard, tied the course record with a 65 in the first round of play. The Waves accounted for four of the top five individual scores in the tournament.
The rest of the WCC schools finished in this order, starting with second place: San Francisco, St. Mary's, San Diego and Loyola Marymount (tied), Gonzaga and Portland, who were two strokes better than Santa Clara.
"It was a struggle out there for us," senior team capain Sandy Horacek said, whose play suffered due to an injury. "You can't say the course played tough, but the pin placements were a little tougher."
The women, on the other hand, were out of contention after the first round and finished a whopping 157 strokes behind first-place Pepperdine. Their top players were freshmen Jessica Lamberty, who shot a 84-83-88=255, which earned her 15th place in the individual standings, and Courtney Dimpel, whose round-by-round scores were 85-86-87=258, good enough for 18th.
Second-place in the women's tournament went to USF, Portland took third, and Gonzaga, whose fourth place score of 1012 kept them safely ahead of the Broncos and their 1045 strokes.