The UCLA men’s golf team, currently ranked No. 26, is set to participate in the Amer Ari Intercollegiate tournament in Hawaii starting Thursday, February 5. The event will be held at the Mauna Lani Resort Golf Club on the Big Island and will continue through Saturday.
Twenty college teams are scheduled to compete in this 54-hole stroke play tournament. Eight of these programs are ranked within the top 25 nationally according to Scoreboard powered by Clippd. UCLA enters as the No. 26 team.
“This is one of the best tournaments of the year, being in Hawaii,” said UCLA head coach Armen Kirakossian. “This is a tournament that we always have fun at and really enjoy. It’s a big-time golf competition with some of the best teams from around the country all converging here, at Mauna Lani. So yes, it’s intense and we want to play well, but we’re looking for the guys to stay loose. That’s not too hard to do when you are in Hawaii, but it’s really important for us, strategically, to just have as much fun as possible and to be as loose as possible because the scoring here gets very low. To shoot those low numbers, you have to go play free and loose. You have to be aggressive and let your talents come out, so that is what we are trying to do.
“The last two years out here, I think that we have shot program records with regard to scoring. So I’m not sure necessarily if that is our goal. It’s just so wind-dependent here in Hawaii. And with the weather and the forecast, right now it looks pretty benign, as far as the wind goes. But you just never know. We will go out there and try to be as relaxed as possible and let it loose, you’ve got to shoot low no matter if it is windy or not. That’s our goal. That is what we’ll strive for. We are really grateful for this opportunity to compete in such a beautiful place.”
This marks UCLA’s second spring tournament of seven scheduled for this season, including participation in the Big Ten Tournament later on. Last week, UCLA tied for eighth place at the Southwestern Invitational hosted in Westlake Village.
The Bruins’ lineup for this week’s event includes Baylor Larrabee, Josh Kim, Kyle An, Luciano Conlan and Trevor Garus; Logan Kim will compete individually.
Other notable teams competing include Pepperdine (No. 4), Auburn (No. 5), Texas (No. 6), Arizona State (No. 7), Oklahoma State (No. 11), North Carolina (No. 15), Texas Tech (No. 16) and Georgia Tech (No. 17). Teams from Stanford (#35), Washington (#36) and others round out a strong field.
The tournament takes place on Mauna Lani’s North Course—a par-72 layout measuring 6,913 yards—with shotgun starts each day beginning at 7:30 a.m., local time.
During fall competition last year under Coach Kirakossian’s fourth season leading UCLA men’s golf—described by many observers as their strongest period recently—the team secured two top-three finishes including winning at Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish Classic where sophomore Baylor Larrabee placed fourth individually after shooting four-under-par across three rounds.
UCLA also claimed titles last season at The Preserve Golf Club Collegiate in Carmel during fall play before capturing spring wins at The Goodwin hosted by Stanford University and then again at Baltimore’s Big Ten Championships.
The Bruins roster features student-athletes from several states including California; Washington; Idaho; Texas; New York; and Hawaii.
