Lawrence Tries to Work Rough Spots Out of Golf Game

It was last summer and things couldn’t get any better.

Mike Lawrence was heading into his sophomore year at UC Irvine in style. He had reached the final 32 in the U.S. Amateur golf championship, being ousted only after a four-hole playoff. He was going to have a good college season.

Come fall, things got better.

Lawrence won an invitational tournament at Pacific, then led the Anteaters to victory at the University of San Francisco Invitational the next week. A good season? No, this was going to be a great one.

Now that it’s spring, those thoughts have tapered off considerably.

Lawrence has struggled with his consistency. He wonders what happened, yet he knows the answer.

“I’ve been looking at the product, not the process,” Lawrence said. “I think I need to get back to the basics and keep my mind on the target.

“I came out of the fall really excited. I got away from what makes you good. The target is the wind, the speed of the greens and all the different things you need to think about. I have been hitting to the hole and the game is not that simple. I need to make it a little more complicated.”

It comes down to a mind game that he’s playing with himself.

Of course, Lawrence hasn’t exactly tumbled out of sight. It’s just that he reached new heights last summer.

Still, he is averaging a shade over 75 in 28 rounds this spring to lead the Anteaters, heading into this weekend’s U.S. Intercollegiate at Stanford. He shot 145 to finish second at the Southern California Intercollegiate at Torrey Pines the first week of March. His second-day 70 was the lowest round of the two-day tournament.

But Lawrence had expected much more.

“I think part of it is the summer and fall he had,” Coach Jeff Johnston said. “Those expectations can be a choke hold if they’re not fulfilled. You get a negative spiral effect and start asking, ‘What’s wrong with me?’

“It’s only natural to have those expectations with the kind of summer Mike had.”

Lawrence won a four-hole playoff to qualify for the U.S. Amateur by sinking an eight-foot putt on the last hole. He then shot a 145 to advance to the final 64.

He defeated Iowa’s Michael McCoy to reach the final 32, then was beaten by Ohio State’s Chris Wollmann after Wollmann birdied the final hole to force a playoff.

In October, he won the Pacific tournament with five birdies on the last day to finish five shots ahead.

“That was the best round I have played,” Lawrence said. “I was real relaxed and the ball was just going in the hole.”

The next week, he placed eighth in the USF tournament at the prestigious Olympic Club in San Francisco.

Said Johnston: “We were walking down the 14th fairway and I tried to ease Mike’s mind. The Olympic has these monstrous trees, so I tired to make a point. I said, ‘Look at these trees, Mike. They didn’t just plant them yesterday.’ He said, ‘Coach, no one planted these trees. They were here.’

Lawrence has been trying to see the forest since.

“Things have been a little better the past week or so,” he said. “I have to remember that golf is a different challenge every day. The weather is different, the greens are different, the course is different. You have to stand up and face that challenge.

“I’ve had some good practice rounds lately. I’m not worried.”

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Hey batter . . . ouch! Golf wasn’t Lawrence’s first love. He didn’t pick up the sport until he was 10, preferring baseball.

“One day I was warming up a pitcher in practice without a mask,” Lawrence said. “We had a batter standing there, but he wasn’t suppose to swing. He did and the ball hit me in the face.”

Lawrence spent four days in the hospital because of a broken blood vessel behind his nose.

“It hurt pretty bad so I said, ‘[forget] baseball, let’s play some golf,’ ” Lawrence said. “My best friend played and my dad played. I got hooked too. I found my sport.”

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Coaching update: Chapman University Coach Mary Hegarty and Irvine assistant Mark Adams will be two of the five candidates interviewed for the women’s basketball position, according to a source. The interviews begin today and end Tuesday.

Hegarty is 55-43 in four seasons at Chapman. The Panthers finished 19-7 last season and reached the first round of the NCAA Division III tournament, where they lost to St. Benedict (Minn.), 97-59. Hegarty, a Tustin High graduate, was a UCLA assistant for four seasons before coming to Chapman.

Adams has been an Anteater assistant the last three seasons. He was 46-29 in three seasons as Hardin-Simmons’ coach and was an assistant at Baylor in 1993-94 before coming to Irvine.

Anteater Coach Colleen Matsuhara was fired at the end of the season.

Anteater Notes

Skye Green put in a little overtime last weekend for the Irvine track and field team. She finished second in the 400-meter hurdles (59.33 seconds) and fourth in the 100 hurdles (14.32) Friday at the Pomona-Pitzer Invitational. Two days later, she won the 400 hurdles open division (58.98) and finished second in her section of the 100 hurdles (14.51) at the Mt. SAC Relays. “We didn’t run her in any relays,” Coach Vince O’Boyle said. “We try not to overwork her.” Green normally runs the 1,600 and 400 relays. . . . The track team’s 3,200 relay team (Jamie Vaicaro, Jamie Blair, Kelly Hughes, Holiday Molway) also won at Mt. SAC, with a time of 9:01.40. . . . The Steve Scott Invitational has been moved to Long Beach State this year while the Irvine track is being renovated. The meet will be May 3, beginning at 10 a.m. Irvine’s track is scheduled to be completed in time for the Big West Championships, May 23-24.

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Coming Attractions

Here’s a look at key games this week for UC Irvine:

* Men’s golf plays Friday through Saturday in the U.S. Intercollegiate at Stanford.

* Men’s tennis participates as individual players in the Ojai tournament today through Sunday.

* Women’s tennis plays Idaho at 12:30 p.m. today in first round of Big West championships, through Sunday at Ojai.

* Men’s and women’s track and field competes in the California/Nevada Championships at Cal State Northridge Saturday and Sunday.