UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : Extra Practice Helps Sugar Perfect His Putting

Joey Sugar has spent a lot of his youth at the Yorba Linda Country Club, playing golf. Most of the time, he practiced the same way any youngster would.

“The typical junior player wants to go out there and hit range balls all day and never put emphasis on the short game,” said Sugar, a former Esperanza High School golfer. “And if you want to be good, that’s probably the most important thing to work on.”

Sugar was already pretty good and, for years, he kept ignoring the fact that there was a reason he three-putted so often.

“I was spending 95% of my time hitting balls, and five to 10 minutes putting,” he said.

After finishing his junior season at UC Irvine with a 75.54 stroke average, Sugar finally faced facts.

“I was probably the worst putter I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I didn’t have any confidence.”

Sugar turned his attention to the putting green and shaved nearly three strokes off his average, finishing Irvine’s fall season with a 72.79.

At the Stanford Invitational last month, he shot 70-73-70 and walked off the par-71 course with fourth place among individuals in the 24-team tournament. He left Palo Alto feeling one of golf’s rarest emotions--satisfaction.

“You very seldom walk off a golf course feeling happy with yourself,” Sugar said. “It’s always, ‘I could have done this, I could have done that . . . ‘ “

These days, Sugar’s practice time is more evenly distributed among the major parts of the game.

“Now I try to make it equal time, one-third, one-third, one-third,” he said.

Those four-foot putts no longer terrify him.

“I had no confidence with short putts,” he said. “I didn’t have any confidence and I had a bad frame of mind.

“I never really wanted to accept that I was a bad putter. After accepting it, I realized I needed to work on it.

“The key to putting is pressuring yourself. When you step to the putt feeling like you’re going to make it, you’re probably going to make it.”

Sugar’s progress helped the Irvine team to an outstanding fall season. He and William Yanagisawa, the team’s most valuable player as a freshman last season, have been the standouts. At the end of the fall, their performances were almost as close as close can be. Yanagisawa had 1,017 strokes, Sugar had 1,019.

With a third-place finish in the competitive 17-team University of San Francisco Invitational last week, Irvine enters its spring season with confidence. Yanagisawa tied for second in that tournament, with a three-over 216.

“I think we could make it to the regionals and hopefully to the NCAA (tournament),” Sugar said.

As for his career, Sugar hopes it will go on beyond college.

“I want to go on with golf as far as I can,” he said. “I realize it’s every kid my age’s dream, but I want to give it a shot. I’ll probably play amateur tournaments, hopefully find some sponsors and hopefully turn pro in the next couple of years.”

He already has had some success at amateur tournaments, making the final 16 in the California State Amateur at Pebble Beach. He might have had a shot at qualifying for the U.S. Amateur but lost it after he followed a morning round of 72 with a 78 in regional qualifying, missing the cut by four strokes.

No matter, there are plenty of tournaments ahead, and Sugar looks forward to playing a lot with his older brother Mike, 26, who played baseball at Irvine for four years and golf for one.

With a steadier putter now, Joey Sugar hopes to reap some rewards, but he’s not overconfident by any means.

“Every time you go to a tournament, they have little putting contests,” he said. “I’d never be a contender in one of those.”

Kevin Smith, a junior forward on the Irvine soccer team, was named second-team All-Big West Conference this week, not teammate Scott Smith, as a Big West release announced and The Times reported.

Jeff Herdman, who set a bundle of three-point shooting records in an Irvine basketball career that ended after last season, is at home in Orange County while hoping to hook on with another professional team.

He played briefly for a team in Belgium, and recently turned down a lowball offer to play in Holland.

“I’m trying to get on somewhere,” he said. “The Global League, the CBA. I’m just playing and working out to stay in shape.”

But just in case nothing works out, Herdman is toying with another plan. He might return to graduate school at Irvine and play on Coach Bill Ashen’s volleyball team.

“I talked to the volleyball coach,” said Herdman, who is 6 feet 7 and has played beach volleyball since playing high school volleyball at Mission Viejo High. “He didn’t guarantee any playing time and I didn’t promise anything.”

Four UC Irvine sailors will compete in the U.S./Japan Goodwill Regatta Nov. 23-Dec. 1 in Tokyo: Geoff Becker, Scott Munch, Randy Lake and Lisa Griffith.

Irvine Notes

Rayna Cervantes, a junior, will be UC Irvine’s only representative at the NCAA cross-country championships Monday in Tucson, Ariz. Irvine’s women’s team, which was ranked 11th in the country, failed to qualify after finishing fifth in the NCAA regional Saturday. . . . The water polo team, 19-7 and 7-2 in the Big West Conference, concludes its regular season with a game at UC Santa Barbara Saturday. Seedings for the NCAA championships, which will be at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach Nov. 29-Dec. 1, will be announced Sunday. . . . Laurel Hooper, a freshman swimmer, won the 500- and 1,000-yard freestyle races in the women’s meet last weekend.