L.A. UNIVERSITY BEAT / WENDY WITHERSPOON : USC Women’s Golf Team Is Poised for ’94

As the collegiate academic year comes to an end, at least one Southland team already has set its sights on next season.

By natural progression, the USC women’s golf team has a good shot at winning the 1994 national championship.

Three years ago, USC Coach Cathy Bright recruited a talented group of players who have improved with each season.

In 1991, the Trojans did not qualify for the national championship tournament and finished ranked 38th in the country. The following year they finished 15th at the NCAA championship. This season, USC, which has never won a golf national championship, finished fifth at last month’s NCAA tournament at Athens, Ga.

Heidi Voorhees, Jill McGill and Camie Hoshino are the core of the team. They will be seniors next season.

“We’re really excited going into next year because we all want (NCAA) rings really badly,” Voorhees said.

This season, the team set several records. During the first round of the NCAA West Regional at Tucson’s Randolph North Golf Course May 13-15, four Trojans combined to shoot a 281, setting a school record. Voorhees and McGill also set school records at the West Regional, when each finished the tournament with a 212.

Voorhees was USC’s top finisher at the NCAA tournament. She shot a 298 over 72 holes to finish tied for 12th place.

NCAA champion Arizona State will return a strong team next season, but Bright says that her team will not be intimidated.

“With all the talent that we have, we have to go after the championship,” Bright said. “Golf is the type of sport where anything can happen.”

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Compounding the improbability of unseeded Davide Sanguinetti of UCLA advancing to the semifinals of the NCAA men’s tennis singles tournament at University of Georgia May 19-23 was that Sanguinetti was one of the final players chosen by the NCAA tennis committee for the 64-player singles’ draw along with Texas’ David Draper.

What’s more, a few days before the singles tournament, the NCAA tennis committee realized it had goofed in selecting the singles draw. It had failed to include Miami’s Tonny van de Pieterman, who was ranked 45th and deserved to be included ahead of 48th-ranked Sanguinetti and 65th-ranked Draper.

That meant that Sanguinetti and Draper would have had to play a qualifying match against each other.

But 37th-ranked Fritz Bissell of UCLA withdrew from the singles tournament at the last minute because of an injured ankle. This allowed both Sanguinetti and Draper to play.

Sanguinetti’s trip to the semifinals included a second-round upset of second-seeded Daniel Courcol of Mississippi State and a quarterfinal upset of Brian MacPhie of USC.

During the regular season, Saguinetti, a sophomore from Ortonovo, Italy, played throughout the lower end of the Bruins’ singles lineup. He plans to begin playing as an amateur in professional tournaments and will not play for UCLA next season.

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The NCAA tennis committee had a difficult time making the singles’ draw because it miscounted the number of players it had invited to the tournament while trying to stay within the NCAA-imposed 156-player cap.

This season, there were 20 teams in the team portion of the tournament, which accounted for 120 players. That meant that only 36 players who were not members of teams already competing in the tournament could be invited for the 32-team doubles draw and the 64-player singles draw. The remainder of those draws were filled with players who are already in the team portion of the tournament.

But the NCAA tennis committee made a mistake this season by only selecting 155 players. Van de Pieterman then was added.

The NCAA tennis committee hopes to free more spots in the individuals’ draws next season by using a regional playoff system and inviting only 16 teams to the national team tournament.

The top eight teams in the nation will earn automatic berths to the team tournament and eight more teams will advance through regional play.

Overall, the tournament will be expanded to 48 teams from 20. But because only 16 teams will advance to the national team tournament, more spots will be free to fill the singles’ and doubles’ draws with the nation’s top individuals.

“We feel like we’ve expanded, which, in this time of cost containment and gender equity, is a miracle,” said Scott Perelman, co-head tennis coach at Tennessee and the chair of the NCAA tennis committee.

The flip side, however, is that it will be more difficult for some teams to advance to the tournament, especially in competitive regions such as the West Coast.

Notes

Medal Count: USC and UCLA won six NCAA championships during the 1992-93 academic year. Each school won one team championship. The Bruins won men’s volleyball at Pauley Pavilion on May 8 and the Trojans won men’s tennis at the University of Georgia on May 18. UCLA won three individual championships: Steve McCain won the high bar at the men’s gymnastics championships April 17 at New Mexico, Erik Smith won the javelin at the NCAA track and field championships at New Orleans last weekend, and Dawn Dumble won the shotput. USC won one individual championship: Balazs Kiss won the hammer throw.

Keri Phoebus, a UCLA freshman, was selected as the Intercollegiate Tennis Assn. Player to Watch last week after finishing the season ranked 11th. . . . Sebastien LeBlanc, a UCLA freshman, was voted the ITA rookie player of the year after finishing the season ranked eighth. . . . Glenn Bassett, UCLA men’s tennis coach, was voted the ITA Coach of the Year after leading the Bruins to the semifinals of the NCAA tournament in his 27th and final season as UCLA coach.

Judeth Petix of Loyola Marymount and Jennifer Brundage of UCLA were selected to the regional Academic All-America softball team by the College Sports Information Directors of America. The national Academic All-America team will be announced June 10.