UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : By Any Name, He’s a Solid Golfer

He is Willy to his teammates on the UC Irvine golf team, and a more formal William on the score card. In the UC Irvine record book, he is William Yanagisawa, noted for setting the mark for most rounds of par or better in one tournament.

At home, he answers to still another name.

“They call me by my Japanese name, Katsumi,” Yanagisawa said.

He is only a freshman, but Yanagisawa is playing No. 1 for Irvine. Already he has put his name in the record book, by shooting 71-72-70 last October in a tournament hosted by the University of the Pacific in Stockton.

He has come a long way from the uncertain moment when he turned down a full scholarship to Cal State Long Beach to venture to Irvine, a place where there was no assurance of financial assistance.

That’s no problem now; he has earned a partial scholarship.

Coach Steve Ainslie took note of Yanagisawa’s first tournament, a 15th-place finish in the New Mexico State Classic in October. He was sixth the next week, setting the school record for rounds of par or better at Pacific. He added a 13th at the Stanford Invitational, and took fourth at the 13-team University of San Francisco tournament. Yanagisawa tumbled to 54th in the first tournament of the winter season, the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate, shooting 238 for three rounds.

“I had a 41 for nine holes,” Yanagisawa said. “That’s about as high as I want to go for nine.”

More like it would be the 66 he once shot on the Recreation Park course in Long Beach, not very far from the golf shop his family runs in North Long Beach.

Yanagisawa says he has been happy at Irvine. He likes the people there, and everyone on the team seems to get along. It is also nice to play new courses.

“Here, I get to play the beautiful courses at private clubs where I wouldn’t be able to play otherwise,” he said. “Besides, you have a chance to meet new people. It seemed like I knew everyone in Long Beach.”

Like many talented, young golfers, Yanagisawa has set his sights on the pro tour.

He knows it will be difficult.

“Coming in, of course, you want to make the team,” he said. “Then I wanted to be No. 1, that was a goal of mine. I didn’t expect to be No. 1 this early.

“Playing No. 1 in college doesn’t mean anything. We’ve got a couple of assistant pros on the mini-tour who can really hit the ball great and putt great. You wonder why they’re not on the tour, but it’s not that easy. It takes a lot of hard work.”

The PGA Tour is the goal, but along the way, there are other options. One with particular appeal to Yanagisawa, a second-generation Japanese-American, is the Asian tour.

“The pros in Japan are different; they’re not as good,” he said. “It can be pretty lucrative to tour in Japan. You don’t have to shoot that low to make good money.”

For now he looks forward to four or five years at Irvine. “However long it takes to get my degree.”

Then, he’ll see.

“I might go over to Japan, play over there,” he said.

Until then, he’ll keep working on his game.

“You don’t have to be big,” the slightly built Yanagisawa said. “I always hit the ball pretty well. I hit it pretty solid. I lose strokes by putting inconsistently.

“It’s a tough game. It looks simple. The ball’s not moving or anything, but it’s pretty tough.”

When 17th-ranked Irvine plays No. 11 Hawaii in men’s volleyball at 7:30 tonight in Crawford Hall, Leland Quinn will be motivated.

“Well, you know, hell hath no fury. . . “ he said.

Like a volleyball player scorned?

Quinn was supposed to play for Hawaii in this match. He is a 6-foot-8, 18-year-old, left-handed volleyball player, all of which spells potential. He went to Hawaii from Ocean View High School last year, but he left in December after one semester, unhappy with the situation there. Quinn was one of several players to leave the program recently, Quinn said, including others, like him, who had disagreements with Coach Alan Rosehill.

“There’s a lot of animosity there,” Quinn said. “It’s not an ideal situation.”

Quinn says he did not sign a letter of intent, but was led to believe he would need only about $1,000 of his own money for a year in school. Instead, he said, there was less money than he was told, and he needed to come up with more than twice that much.

That was only one of the things that sent him packing, Quinn said.

An attempt to reach Rosehill was unsuccessful.

“I usually keep a pretty clear mind,” said Quinn, a starter for Irvine. “But there’s not really anything sweeter than revenge. I don’t want it to cloud me. I don’t want to put anyone down. People make mistakes.”

The Irvine men’s basketball team has moved up to second in the nation in three-point field goals per game, as has Jeff Herdman, the team’s top long-range shooter.

Irvine’s average of 9.4 three-pointers a game is second only to N.C. State’s 9.5 among Division I teams. Herdman’s average of 3.9 is second to the 4.8 average of Bobby Phills of Southern University in Baton Rouge, La.

Stat of the Week: 28%. The men’s team shot 50% from three-point range in a loss to Fresno State last Thursday, but made only nine of 32 shots, or 28%, from the two-point range.

Anteater Notes

The men’s basketball team hosts Cal State Long Beach Thursday and 16th-ranked New Mexico State on Saturday. Both games are at 7:30 in Bren Center. . . . Jenny Lee, who has switched from point guard to small forward, has moved into second place on the Irvine women’s team’s career assist list. She has 87 this season, and trails Erin Higashi’s record of 351 by 47. . . . The baseball team has five games in six days this week, with only Thursday off. The Anteaters play three home games, Chapman at 2:30 today, Cal State Dominguez Hills at 2:30 Friday and UC Riverside at 1 Sunday. . . . The men’s tennis team’s match against No. 1 Stanford last week was rained out. . . . The men’s swim team had its five-meet winning streak stopped at Nevada Las Vegas last weekend.