Columnist Adam Candee: Outlook for UNLV women may not be so sunny

Adam Candee

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2005 | 9:40 a.m.

Adam Candee covers golf for the Sun. Reach him at (702) 259-4085 or by e-mail at candee@lasvegassun.com.

Right Said Fred. Joe Charboneau. Spice Girls. My one date with a gymnast.

You don't need to call in John Nash to crack the code. They're all proof that a meteoric rise to success guarantees nothing more than the opportunity to fall just as fast.

The challenge of the 2005 spring season for the UNLV women's golf team is to match the success of last year's breakout finish, thereby proving that the young program deserves to be considered among the country's best. Anything short of a season that matches the quality of the Rebels' ranking of 28th in the nation will be a setback for Missy Ringler.

Let's define "matches the quality" as, at the bare minimum, a trip to NCAA regionals and probably a berth at nationals. There is a little bit of pressure, Ringler said Tuesday, to reach those heights for the second consecutive year with a revamped group.

"There will be people who think, if we don't make it to nationals, 'Whoa, what happened to them?' " Ringler said.

No one could be blamed for saying the same thing during the Rebels' fall season this year. UNLV scuffled until winning its home event with senior Hwanhee Lee claiming the individual crown to close the fall, the only real bright spot in four mediocre months that Ringler said her team spent forming an identity.

"If you look back on last year, we kind of did the same thing," Ringler said.

Very true, as UNLV struggled through the fall before busting loose in spring to temporarily earn billing with the best. UNLV gets the chance to firm up its foothold among the elite beginning Monday at the Northrop Grunman Regional Challenge in Los Angeles. Fittingly, the Rebels earned the chance to be in the tournament by way of their strong play at the end of last season.

Seven of the top nine teams in the country will tee off in the tournament, so we'll find out in a hurry if UNLV belongs. The Rebels shined against tough competition at both the Mountain West Conference tournament and the regionals last year, but that was with Sunny Oh in the fold.

Ah, there's the other piece of this puzzle. An All-American in her two years at UNLV, Oh left the program in June after her sophomore season to turn pro, subsequently fizzling on the LPGA's Futures Tour last summer.

The poor girl didn't really want to leave, only doing so at the brazen urging of her parents. Not only did Oh need more time at UNLV, but Ringler needed her as well. Oh's huge talent and ability to handle pressure made her the clear-cut No. 1 every time out in the spring, at least in the minds of her teammates. Beyond that, though, Oh's gregarious personality helped keep the team loose.

"A successful team isn't based on one player," Ringler said.

Yet for UNLV, that one player created a domino effect on the rest, creating pressure that they struggled to handle. Replacing both of those qualities proved too hard early this year, and that undercut the Rebels' fall.

Ringler is pleased with the work that the core of the team - starting with Lee, sophomore Seema Sadekar and junior Elena Kurokawa - did over the long winter break to improve.

What a strange situation it is for a college golf coach: You spend four months building a team, and then NCAA regulations dictate that you leave your players alone for about six weeks. Ringler only began working with the entire team this week in preparation for the Northrop tournament.

She is happy to see that although she feels some pressure to match last year, her girls aren't showing it.

"If they do (feel pressure), they haven't really shown that," Ringler said. "They haven't really said anything like it."

The reinforcements are coming in the form of Golfweek's fourth-ranked national recruiting class. A pair of the American Junior Golf Association's top 20 juniors - Sooji Cho (15th) and Grace Woo (17th) - headlines a good crop for Ringler. And projecting a year out, Ringler will have the chance to recruit Bishop Gorman's In-Bee Park, the current top-ranked junior in the country, to stay in her back yard.

Will the young guns be coming in to rebuild with little more help or reload in a self-recruiting program? The Rebels get to choose during the next four months.