by Matt Paulson
Special to the Campus Times
Bewildering slopes, untimely bad breaks, and, worst of all, their own inner demons haunted the University of La Verne golf team in its first Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference match this season.
Just up Wheeler Avenue at Sierra La Verne Country Club, the Leopards dropped their first conference match to Pomona-Pitzer by two strokes, 309-307, Feb. 12.
“It was a bad day,” said sophomore Doug Green, who shot a 77 Thursday. Green finished in a tie for 80th at nationals last year with an individual total of 312. “Our team wasn’t ready to play.”
Generally, the Leopards pound teams at Sierra La Verne, as their average score in conference dual matches last year at home was 292 to their opponents’ 319.
But last week, freaky Friday came a day early. ULV arrived at the course to find pin placements few had ever experienced, spots so difficult that players witnessed their peers four-putting and rolling balls off the green, “ridiculous things like that,” Green said.
“It was almost like a course we haven’t seen before,” Green continued. “It was a joke.”
To compound this confusion, the luck pendulum decided to take a sovereign in Pomona-Pitzer’s court.
On the 18th hole, sophomore Scott Pearsall of Pomona-Pitzer, who carded a 76 on the day, hit a drive that should have found the other side of the out of bounds stakes, which would have cost Pearsall a stroke and distance, putting him back at the tee hitting his third shot: In essence, two strokes would have automatically been added to his round.
Instead, his ball ricocheted off a tree back into the middle of fairway. Pearsall would go on to par on 18, and his 76 helped propel Pomona-Pitzer over La Verne by two strokes.
“There were like three or four instances like that,” said senior Joe Skovron, who occupies the No. 1 spot for ULV. Skovron, who boasted the lowest conference scoring average during the 2003 season (73.48) and finished tied for 78th in the national tournament, shot 79 last Thursday.
“Stuff like that was happening to their team, and we just got bad breaks,” Green said.
Combine the unfortunate breaks with the unfamiliar pin placements and the fact that ULV was simply not ready to play, and the end result was a loss, Green said.
Entering the season-opening match, Pomona-Pitzer was the undisputed underdog. Last year, the Sagehens finished sixth overall in the conference, beating only Whittier and Caltech with a SCIAC record of 2-5 and an overall record of 3-5.
Inversely, the Leopards finished second with a SCIAC and overall record of 6-1. As a team, La Verne battled inclement weather to finish 21st in the national tournament at Dornoch Golf Club in Delaware, Ohio. At the end of the year, ULV occupied four spots on the all-SCIAC squads: Skovron and James Pearce were first team, and Green and Joey Murray were second, all of whom remain on the 2004 roster.
In the 2003 conference matchup, La Verne also stomped the Sagehens by 14 strokes at home, shooting 298 to Pomona-Pitzer’s 312.
But this year—to employ the most overused allegorical cliché in the history of sports writing—David donned his sling and slew Goliath. And he did it on Goliath’s own turf.
“They got all the good breaks to shoot what they shot, and we made all the mistakes to shoot what we shot,” Skovron said. “They can’t shoot any lower than that, and we can’t shoot any higher than that.”
Murray was the low for ULV, firing 39-39—74, and Pat Kelly of Pomona-Pitzer was the medalist with nines of 36 and 37 for a 73.
Yesterday, ULV hosted Caltech at Sierra La Verne. Results were not available at press time.
Two new Leopards qualified for the match against Caltech. Freshman Nathan Logan, whose 78 last week did not count because he was No. 7, played, as did Brad Booher, a red shirt last year, who shot a 75 last Thursday at Sierra La Verne.
Starting next week, ULV enters into a serious run of golf.
Next Thursday, the Leopards head to Thousand Oaks to take on Cal Lutheran.
They then leave to play in the Battle at the Lakes in San Diego, hosted by San Diego State University.
Shortly after, they play in the Cal State San Marcos Invitational on March 1-2. Conference matches against Occidental and Claremont follow on March 5 and March 8, respectively.
“It’s a lot of golf,” Green said.