Women's golf finish second at invitational

By Tom Schreier

On October 5, the Santa Clara women's golf team finished second in a field of nine teams at the Firestone Grill Invitational, hosted by Cal Poly. The team's third round score of 300 was a tournament best, but was not enough to pass Cal State-Northridge on the leaderboard.

Despite gusty winds in the first two rounds of the three-round tournament, which was played at Monarch Dunes Golf Club in Nipomo, CA, the team was able to post a score of 928 (310-318-300), just 12 strokes shy of the lead.

Scores are calculated at the end of the day by adding each of the players' scores and dropping the highest one. There are six women on the team, five of whom get to travel to each tournament; three Broncos were able to finish in the top 10.

"Golf is a game where anybody can beat anybody on any given day," said senior Miki Ueoka, who placed second in the tournament. "Yeah there are certain trends, and that is obviously why people are ranked, but somebody can have a really good day and somebody that is supposed to be doing really well can have an off day."

By nature, golf is an individual sport. However, the women on the team have built a strong camaraderie and support each other as much as possible on and off the course.

"When we see each other on the course we...do gestures or something (else) to motivate each other," said junior Tamara Surtees, who tied for sixth at the Invitational.

"We live together and we're really close," said Ueoka in reference to Surtees, both of whom came to Santa Clara from Hawaii, adding that the only having six players on the team is conducive to that closeness. "You hear of other women's teams where there (are) cliques and all that stuff. We don't have that."

While progressing from hole to hole, it is difficult for the ladies to communicate with one another, but the team has set up a system in order to help each lady focus on certain aspects of the mental game in order to help them play at the highest level possible.

"(Even) if (Miki's) playing ahead of me," said Surtees. "I still don't know what she's shooting or how she's doing."

"That's when the individual part of the game comes in," added Ueoka. "It's on you to have that mental game."

Rick Sessinghaus, Santa Clara's mental game coach, helps the women with the mental aspect of golf. During the tournament the women have a conference call with him where each player goes through what they need to work on and the goals they have set before each round.

"A lot of it is just staying process oriented because with golf it is easy to be like, 'Well I'm already four over and it's already been 'x' amount of holes and I need to start doing better,'" noted Ueoka, who said Sessinghaus' job is to steer players away from that kind of mental trap.

"You need to be able to hit every different kind of shot. (Every shot) you take is worth the same amount of strokes so you have to be aware of that."

Although the ladies did not feel that Monarch Dunes was significantly harder than most of the courses they play on, it featured various challenges that were foreign to the team.

"It's shorter and there's a lot more placement shots," said Ueoka. "A lot of other courses you can basically hit it as far as you want and then expect it to go straight, but this one there's a lot more doglegs and stuff like that."

"Instead of hitting a driver off the tee," added Surtees, "sometimes you have to hit (a) five wood or a three wood just because (you can't hit through the trees)."

The most challenging aspect of the course was that there were elevated greens. On an elevated green the pin is placed so high that it is difficult to see while hitting a shot from the fairway.

"You have to factor in more distance or less distance for something like that," said senior Lauren Oh, who tied for ninth in the tournament. "Even if it's not something you practice you're still hitting the same shots, it's just what type of shot you're going to hit, that's where it comes in."

"We have a book where we draw out all the greens," says Surtees. "Just reminders, and we carry it around throughout the day."

The Broncos look to carry their momentum from the Firestone Grill Invitational to Silver Creek Valley Country Club in San Jose where they will be playing a two-day tournament starting on October 25.

Contact Tom Schreier at tschreier@scu.edu or at (408) 554-4849.