Golfer honored in final round at LV
Campus Times
May 21, 2004
Senior Joey Murray has been playing golf at the University of La Verne for
four years. Murray was named SCIAC Male Athlete of the Week on May 5 after helping
lead La Verne to its second conference title in school history. He also received
the 2004 SCIAC Co-Player of the Year for his efforts after earning medalist
honors in five tournaments this season.
It’s easy to eat, sleep and breathe golf when you grow up at the golf
course. And for University of La Verne senior Joey Murray, that was how he was
introduced to his passion for golf.
The 22-year-old business administration major and Southern California Intercollegiate
Athletic Conference’s Co- Player of the Year has lived on the edge of Upland
Hills Golf Course since he was a child, practicing there with his dad.
Although he grew up with the sport, it was not until high school that Murray
began to take golf seriously. When he decided he was not good enough to play
for the baseball or soccer teams, he took the course less traveled.
“My dad wanted me to be involved in high school, so it was band or golf,
and I picked golf,” Murray said, admitting he was not serious about the
sport until his sophomore year at Upland High School. “I really wasn’t
that good at golf either and then I got serious about it. You can do anything
if you’re that serious.”
Murray proves every day how serious he is with his practice ethic.
“He will spend way more time than we do at practice on his game,”
ULV head coach Rex Huigens said. “He’s a practice-holic; he would
practice all the time and we saw the fruits of that dedication this year, and
hopefully it will continue for him.”
When school is in session he practices around his schedule, but during the
summer he commits himself to the game.
“I pretty much play golf all day when the sun’s up in the summer,”
Murray said. “It’s all I do; I don’t have much time for anything
else.”
Aside from playing at Upland Hills, a public course, Murray is a member at
the Red Hill Country Club in Rancho Cucamonga.
He has also been working privately with a coach in San Diego a couple times
a month since his freshman year at ULV to improve his skills. He said he used
to go every week.
“You don’t have to worry about coaching Joey because he basically
will coach himself,” Huigens said. “No one’s harder on Joey than
Joey. He’s very much his own critic as far as play, he expects a high level
of play and he knows what it takes to shoot that.”
This work ethic has led Murray to many accomplishments. He was named first
team All-SCIAC his freshman and sophomore years.
His junior year he was second team, and this year he was honored as Co-Player
of the Year for the conference, having the lowest stroke average in the conference
with 72.7.
“This year was my best average, my freshman year was my second best average,
and then in the middle, I don’t know, I struggled,” Murray said. “This
year I think I’m a lot better than I have ever been before.”
His sophomore year he was a tournament All-American and this season he was
a pre-tournament All-American, where the three top players from each region
with the lowest average are automatically named All-Americans no matter how
they perform in the tournament. He has also achieved Academic All-American status
two times.
The team also accomplished a great feat this season, taking the SCIAC title
for the first time in Murray’s four years, the second in school history.
The first was in 1989.
“It was so fun to win conference because we never did it all three years.
Our teams got better and better every year and this is the best team I’ve
been on in four years,” Murray said. “We went to nationals all four
years, but all Rex ever talked about was winning a conference championship.
The other sports win them once in a while, but we’ve only won two of them
in 30-something years for golf. It’s a big deal for us to win one for golf.”
The Leopards’ main competition for the conference title the past two
years has been the University of Redlands, a school Murray seriously considered
attending.
“I really think I had a lot more fun coming to La Verne,” Murray
said. “You can’t always win, but we finally won this year, so that
was good. I never thought I didn’t make the right decision in coming to
La Verne.”
According to Huigens, Murray had decided to go to Redlands, but changed his
mind the next day to come to La Verne.
“A lot of it was Rex. I wanted to play for Rex,” Murray said. “He’s
a great guy. I made an easy decision to come to La Verne.”
“He was a critical recruit to have our program be as good as it was,”
Huigens said. “Joey obviously was one of those two that has carried us
for four years. We would not have been near as good a golf team without him
any of those four years, and especially this year; he had an outstanding year.
He just matured a lot as a player, he was very determined to be a very good
player.”
Murray, along with his teammates, took a sixth-place finish this year at the
national competition, held in Beaumont. It was the best finish that any ULV
golf team has ever achieved.
“We’ve never been better than 14th for the school, and I don’t
think better than 16th or 18th when I’ve been here, so it was a big accomplishment
and we all felt real good about that,” Murray said.
Murray tied for 32nd individually, shooting 78-77-75-73–303, a finish
that was not as good as he had hoped for, but he was satisfied.
“I was kind of disappointed how I personally did, but I’ve had a
year where I played well in nationals, so I really wanted the team to do well,”
Murray said. “It was just a lot more fun with the team playing well.”
“Obviously he was bothered by it, but he didn’t let it throw him
off,” Huigens said.
Instead, Murray continued to improve his play with each round.
“He’s got a never-quit attitude,” said Andrew Garcia, teammate.
“More so than anyone else. He believes he can bring it back no matter what
if he’s doing bad.”
“In golf you have to accept that you shoot what you shoot. And he does.
He still kept a great attitude all four of those days for the team, encouraging
others, and that’s part of the maturity factor I think this year. I’m
extremely pleased with Joey’s total experience this year on the team and
the role he played for us.”
Huigens said he does not usually name captains, but this year he told the
team that Murray and Joe Skovron would be the captains, setting the tone for
the team.
“I think Joey really accepted the role well, and led not just by his
play but by his actions. He was very instrumental in helping some of the younger
players on the team,” he said. “Joey made a point of when he saw a
guy down he’d go over and try to encourage him, tell him to hang in there,
and offer a little advice and maybe share his experiences that would help a
guy. The guys responded well to his encouragement.”
Murray has one semester remaining in the fall to finish his degree. He is
unsure where he will go from there. He said he will wait until he finishes school
to figure it out.
“I’m going to try to play and see how it goes,” Murray said.
“There’s a lot of amateur tournaments and other things, but I haven’t
really made a decision. I want to play golf and my parents want me to pursue
it, but you never know how that’s going to go.”
He said although he wants to continue with golf, he will miss the team at
ULV.
“Our team is great. We hang out together a lot outside of golf, so we’re
a pretty close-nit group,” Murray said.
“I couldn’t have picked a better teammate to play with the four
years,” Skovron said.
It is apparent that he also has a great relationship with Huigens.
“I wish I had four more years to play for Rex,” Murray said. “Rex
was a really good coach, he never got in the way, but he always made sure he
was helping you out anyway he could. He was the best coach I could have had.”
Huigens said Murray will also be missed by the program, but that his contributions
will bode well for the future.
“He’s one of the best we’ve ever had, no doubt about it. You
just can’t replace a guy like that,” Huigens said. “But he’ll
still be around. I’m sure the guys who have played with him will reference
him.”
