Golf
earns first championship since 1973
By
Karl Peterson
On-line Forty-Niner
Fifty-four
holes were on the scorecard at the Big West
Championship Tournament and thought the
49ers men’s golf team thought it had
missed winning its first championship since
1973 by one stroke.
After
reviewing the scorecard of a UC Riverside
golfer, the two teams realized that there
was a mistake and the two teams were tied
at 864 strokes, forcing a team playoff to
decide the 2004 Big West Champion at Tijeras
Creek in Mission Viejo.
“Let’s
get together, we’re going back out
there,” is what head coach Bob Livingstone
said to his team after realizing the golfers
still had a chance to win.
After
playing three rounds in two days and 100
degree plus weather took its toll on the
team but having a chance to win the championship
gave the golfers a second wind.
“It
was 102 degrees on Monday,” Livingstone
said. “We went through four cases
of bottled water that day.”
The
second wind cooled the golfers’ nerves
and they defeated UC Riverside on the first
playoff hole. The 49ers recorded three pars
and two bogeys while UC Riverside made three
bogeys and two pars on the 17th hole giving
the 49ers the championship and an automatic
berth in the NCAA Regional starting May
20 at the Sunriver Resort in Bend, Ore.
The
heat took its toll on The Beach and after
Tuesday’s round the team was tired
and hungry. So hungry that the tournament
organizers delayed the trophy presentation
15 minutes to all The Beach golfers to get
a bite to eat.
Livingstone
said that the 49ers shots on the playoff
were not anything spectacular, but that
a UC Riverside golfer missed a four-foot
putt that could have forced another playoff
hole.
The
championship was unexpected after the LBSU
men’s spring season. The 49ers finished
in the middle of the pack of teams in most
of the tournaments. The poor performance
was not indicative of the team’s skill
level the team is young with three freshmen
and sophomore which has played a tough schedule,
Livingstone said.
The
coach put the schedule together in order
to get his team ready for the playoffs and
so far it has worked.
In
addition to the team championship, sophomore
Todd Saukkola won the individual championship
with a three-round score of 209, good for
seven-under-par on the par 72 course.
“He
played very well at Stanford and played
very well [in the Big West Championship],”
Livingstone said. “He would be the
first one to tell you that he has not played
well in the spring, but he worked hard and
it paid off.”
It
was the first time a 49er has captured the
individual title since Bob Summers accomplished
the feat in 1983.
With
the automatic bid to the regional The Beach
will now prepare to finish in the top 10
at the tournament. Finishing among the top
10 of 27 teams qualifies the team for the
NCAA Championship played in Homestead, Va.
“We
need to believe in ourselves,” Livingstone
said. “We are not--over the course
of the year--as good as some of the teams
like UCLA and Arizona State, but if we play
well, there is no reason we can’t
qualify.”
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