Perseverance Paying Off for Leach : Former Rolling Hills High Star Wins Collegiate Championship

Kevin Leach of Rolling Hills Estates had to do a lot of adjusting during his first year as a UCLA golfer. And during his second. And his third.

The first three years of Leach’s collegiate golfing career were frustrating and somewhat discouraging.

He qualified for the NCAA tournament all three years and was named to the PAC-10 all-conference team last year, but he couldn’t win a title.

That was a drastic change from his days as a prep star at Rolling Hills High, where he was a four-year varsity player and set a record for the lowest stroke average.

“I had a hard time adjusting,” Leach said. “In high school, I truly felt I could beat anybody on any given day. Well, when I got to college, I was up against older, more experienced players. My freshman year, I had a couple of good rounds, but I also had a lot of bad ones.”

At Rolling Hills, Leach was a Bay League player of the year three times and the league’s individual champion twice.

The 23-year-old received the prestigious Curtis Memorial Cup as the outstanding junior golfer in Southern California and he was an American Junior Golf Assn. All-American.

In 1983, he placed second in the California Junior State Championships and had the best individual score, 148, as the Southern California representative in the American Junior Golf Assn. 36-hole tournament in Portland.

“He was a blue-chip prospect coming out of high school,” said UCLA golf Coach Eddie Merrins, who has coached 13 All-Americans in his 12-year tenure. “His progress in college has been slow to this point but steady.”

It wasn’t until this year, after two unsatisfying seasons and two personal hardships, that Leach finally won a collegiate title as the Bruins’ top golfer.

Early in the season, he won the University of San Francisco Intercollegiate Invitational by 10 strokes. Leach shot two rounds of 72 and went into the final round, which he shot 67 with a two-shot lead.

“I could feel things coming together in my swing,” Leach said. “It just felt so good to win my first title. It was great. No, it was awesome.”

Merrins said the victory emphasized Leach’s individual strength and potential to be an All-American this year.

“He really gained the respect of his peers,” Merrins said. “That was the field (where) they played the U.S. Open last year. He won on a course of top-flight professional status.”

On April 10, Leach won the even more prestigious Stanford Intercollegiate tournament. At Stanford, he shot rounds of 69, 64 and 73 for a 7-under-par tournament victory. He shot 206 in the tournament and won by four strokes.

“It was crazy,” Leach said. “I was nervous at first, but then I just got hot.”

In addition to the titles, Leach has had seven top-10 finishes in 11 tournaments this year. He averages 72.5 strokes per round, which is half a stroke above par, and has finished first for the Bruins in seven tournaments.

The success however, can’t erase unpleasant memories. It’s been a rough road to college stardom for the fifth-year senior.

After his sophomore season in 1985, Leach red-shirted to develop his game and to mature. However, that marked the beginning of a difficult period for him. In the summer of 1985, his father, Joe, died. At the end of the 1985-86 academic year, Leach was declared academically ineligible at UCLA.

“I was just having a hard time coming to grips with my father’s death,” Leach said. “I only wish that he could have seen my victories. My dad’s probably the reason I got a scholarship in golf. He pushed me in high school. He really pushed me hard.”

Teammate Brandt Jobe says Leach’s life was a mess during that time.

“He had too much free time on his hands,” Jobe said. “Golf is what helps him schedule his time better, and since he wasn’t playing, he was out of line.

“On top of that, he suddenly had to be responsible. He really had to take over a lot of family responsibilities when his dad died.”

It was his father who introduced Leach to the game he calls an “addiction.” Joe Leach used to take his son along for leisurely rounds of golf. When Leach was 4, he played his first course in Torrance, a par-3. His dad told him that the day he broke 40, he could move up to a better course. By the time Leach was 9, he competed with his father and other men at Harbor Park in Wilmington.

“One day, we were going out to play,” Leach said, “and one of the men told my dad, ‘You can’t take that little kid out there. He’ll never finish. He’ll just slow us down.’ Well, I shot 54 that day. I tied that guy.”

He continued improving under the supervision of his father, then under Rolling Hills Coach Jerry Kestenberg, who died about eight months ago.

Leach said he couldn’t let more than a decade of hard work and seemingly endless hours on the range with his father go to waste. That’s why he put forth the effort to become academically eligible and attend school in the fall of 1986.

To be readmitted, Leach had to attend an extension course the summer before his junior year and maintain a 3.0 grade-point average for two quarters. He studied so hard in fact, that he made the school’s honor roll.

The history major will make his fourth appearance in the NCAA national tournament on May 22-24 at the North Ranch country club in Westlake Village.

This week, Leach will be in Berkeley for the PAC-10 tournament at the Orinda Country Club.

After UCLA he plans to play professionally, although he realizes it won’t be easy.

“This game is tough,” he said. “The football players always say to us, ‘Golf, what a wimp sport.’ I just say, ‘Hey, man, anybody can lift weights.’ Golf takes a lot of skills.”