Los Al's Lee leads O.C. on tough day at Talega

SAN CLEMENTE - She had never seen the course before she teed off on Monday at Talega, and the strong ocean breezes made it even more challenging.

Still Esther Lee managed to post a score that put her among the select group of seven golfers, who were the only ones break par at the CIF Southern Section girls golf Individual Championships.

The Los Alamitos freshman holed four birdies and finished with a 1-under 71. That, however, put her in a tie for sixth place, four stokes behind first-place Emily Tubert of John Burroughs of Burbank. Notre Dame-bound Kristina Nhim (Cypress) ended up with an even-par 72 putting her in eighth.

Scores were a bit higher than might be expected for a section championship, but the girls really had no good way to judge the distance of their shots and what they had left to the green.

Talega uses carts equipped with GPS, to give players accurate yardage to the hole, so there aren't any markers out on the course. During CIF tournaments, though, the girls walk the course.

University's Ani Gulugian, who finished 3-over, said CIF officials considered spray painting yardages on the fairways, but course officials didn't like that idea.

"That (lack of yardage markers) wasn’t that big of a deal for me. That's because I usually had short clubs in, so I could just eyeball it or pace it out," said Lee, the lowest scoring Orange County golfer in the 88-player field. "And then, I would look at what the other girls were doing, and I could kind of calculate it from that."

Lee was among the 28 golfers who qualified for Monday's WSCGA state qualifying tournament at the SCGA Members Course in Murrieta. 

Nhim, Elisabeth Bernabe (Canyon), Annie Downey (Mission Viejo), Ashley Greer (Marina), Gulugian, Tracey Kim (Northwood), Victoria Nguyen (Mater Dei), Kaitlin Park (Beckman), Jessica Vasilic (Canyon) and Amy Lee (Irvine) all earned a spot in the WSCGA event. Lee finished with a 78 which put her in an eight-way playoff to earn one of the three remaining tee times in Murrieta.

Alston was on the playoff, too. But she was eliminated on the second hole in sudden death after pushing her drive to the left. Lee, wasted little time securing a spot in the next round, birdying her first playoff hole after knocking her approach to within two feet of the pin. Alston's approach landed next to the pin, too, on the first playoff hole, but her ball caught the slope on the green leaving her with a 15-footer. She ended up with a two-putt par.

Vasilic and Gulugian had been playing extremely well entering Thursday's CIF Individual Championships as Vasilic posted the lowest score at Monday's CIF Team Championship and Gulugian won the CIF Southern Individual Regional in Hemet. On Thursday, though, they both finished with 75s, eight shots behind the leader.

Vasilic said she underestimated the slope of the fairways, and the ball "rolled all over the place." She had four double-bogeyes during her round.

"I hit it out of bounds, in hazards and environmentally safe areas," Vasilic said. "I thought the course was hard because of the sloping."

As for Gulugian, she said she was working on "some new stuff with my swing, and I am just trying to work through that right now." Afterward, she pulled out her putter and hit the practice green, watching all of the other players stream parade past her into the parking lot.

"It is definitely not my best, and it's probably the worst that I have played in some time," she said. "I missed a lot of putts today, and that was really frustrating."