Playing alongside future PGA TOUR players changed my understanding of what great golf looked like and taught me that talent alone was never going to be enough.
When I think about playing golf at UCLA, I do not remember a particular score first.
I remember the range.
I remember looking around and seeing really good players everywhere.
Corey Pavin. Steve Pate. Jay Delsing. Duffy Waldorf.
We were young then. Nobody was walking around talking about future PGA TOUR victories or major championships. We were college golfers trying to make the lineup, win tournaments for UCLA and find out how good we could become.
But looking back, there was an incredible amount of talent in one place.
And when that is the environment you walk into every day, your idea of what is good changes pretty quickly.
Mine certainly did.
Some of Our Toughest Competition Wore the Same UCLA Shirt
One of the best things that happened to me at UCLA was having teammates who could beat me.
There is something different about occasionally seeing a great player across the fairway in a tournament and seeing one standing beside you on the practice range every afternoon.
Corey and I overlapped for several years. Steve, Jay and Duffy were also part of that era of UCLA golf.
Today, it is easy to look at their professional careers and understand how talented those teams were.
We did not look at it that way then.
They were the guys beside you hitting balls.
You saw how they practiced. You watched how they shaped shots. You noticed who could get the ball up and down when he had no business making par. You saw who wanted the putt when something was on the line.
And they were watching you too.
That creates a certain kind of pressure, but it is good pressure.
There was nowhere to hide from the standard because the standard was standing ten feet away.
If somebody was doing something better than I was, I could see it. Then I had a choice.
I could be intimidated by it, or I could get better.
UCLA taught me to choose the second one.
Eddie Merrins Expected You to Own Your Game
Then there was Eddie Merrins.
Anyone who knows golf knows what Eddie meant to the game. He became one of its most respected teachers and was known as The Little Pro, but to us he was Coach.
Eddie understood the golf swing, but what I remember just as much was the standard he expected from his players.
He could teach you. He could challenge you. He could point you in the right direction.
But eventually, your golf game belonged to you.
That was an important lesson to learn before becoming a professional.
On Tour, nobody comes looking for you at the end of the day to make sure you practiced.
Nobody tells you to go hit another bucket of balls because your iron play was not good enough.
Nobody makes you stay on the putting green when everyone else has left.
You have to care enough to do those things yourself.
That sense of responsibility started developing for me at UCLA under Eddie.
Decades later, I am still often one of the last players on the practice area after a tournament round.
Some habits never really leave you.
UCLA Showed Me There Was Another Level
Before college, I knew I could play golf.
You almost have to believe that about yourself to reach that level in the first place.
Then I got to UCLA.
College golf has a way of showing a young player very quickly that being good back home and being good in a lineup full of elite players are two very different things.
That was valuable for me.
I did not need to become Corey Pavin or Steve Pate. I needed to understand what they did well, recognize where my own game needed to improve and then figure out how to become the best version of Tom Pernice.
That distinction became increasingly important as my career went on.
Great players can teach you a lot.
But eventually you have to win with your golf swing, your strengths and your mind.
I became a two time All American at UCLA and earned conference Player of the Year honors. I remain very proud of those accomplishments.
But the bigger thing UCLA gave me was an understanding of what those accomplishments required.
Talent gets you into the conversation.
Work determines how long you stay there.
All That Talent and No NCAA Championship
There is one part of our UCLA years that still makes me laugh.
With all those future professional golfers coming through the program, we never won an NCAA Championship.
People have asked me about that over the years.
It is a fair question.
We had Corey Pavin, who would eventually win the U.S. Open. Steve Pate became a multiple winner on the PGA TOUR. Jay Delsing and Duffy Waldorf went on to long professional careers.
There was no shortage of golf talent.
Apparently somebody forgot to tell the NCAA trophy.
But that is also one of the things I love about this game.
Golf does not care what your résumé says.
It does not care how good your team looks on paper, how well you practiced Tuesday or how confident you felt walking to the first tee.
Eventually somebody hands you a scorecard.
Then you have to prove it.
That lesson followed me straight into professional golf.
There were plenty of weeks during my career when I knew I was playing well enough to win.
Knowing it and doing it are two different things.
Golf makes you earn the difference.
From UCLA Teammates to PGA TOUR Competitors
One of the great parts of looking back now is realizing how many of those college relationships followed us into professional golf.
The guys I practiced beside at UCLA eventually became the guys I saw on PGA TOUR ranges and leaderboards.
Corey became a major champion and Ryder Cup captain. Steve won multiple times on the PGA TOUR. Jay and Duffy built long careers in professional golf.
And suddenly we were together again.
Only now there were galleries, sponsors, television cameras and a paycheck attached to the scorecard.
There is something pretty special about that.
We knew each other before any of it happened.
We knew each other when we were young guys carrying college bags, competing for UCLA and wondering whether we were good enough to make a living playing golf.
Then we got to spend decades finding out.
Golf is an individual sport, and once the tournament starts everybody wants to beat everybody.
But there is still a bond that comes from knowing somebody before the world knew him as a PGA TOUR player or a major champion.
Those relationships mean more to me today than I probably realized they would when we were 20 years old.
The Competition Eventually Becomes a Family
One of the things I never could have understood as a college player is how those relationships change over a lifetime in golf.
When you are young and trying to establish yourself on the PGA TOUR, everybody is competing for the same thing. You want to win. You want to keep your card. You want to prove you belong.
Then the years pass.
One by one, familiar faces start turning 50 and joining PGA TOUR Champions.
There is something pretty great about watching a player you competed against for years arrive for his first week on the Champions Tour. Everybody remembers being the new guy, so there is a genuine sense of welcoming him into the group.
In a lot of ways, PGA TOUR Champions feels like a family.
We still want to beat each other. Make no mistake about that. Put a scorecard in our hands and nobody is giving anybody anything.
But when the round is over, there is a different kind of camaraderie.
These are guys you have known for decades. You have competed against each other, traveled the same roads, raised families during many of the same years and experienced a lot of the same highs and lows that come with professional golf.
Then another familiar face turns 50 and joins us, and the family gets a little bigger.
I think that is one of the special things about this stage of the game.
Some of the guys I first knew as college teammates eventually became PGA TOUR competitors. Others became friends through years of competition. Now many of us are together again on PGA TOUR Champions.
The desire to win never disappears.
But with time, you realize how fortunate you are to still be competing alongside people who have been part of your life in golf for so long.
The trophies matter.
The friendships last a lot longer.
What UCLA Still Means to Me
More than four decades have passed since my college golf days, but I can still recognize UCLA in the way I approach competition.
It taught me that being around great players should not intimidate you.
It should sharpen you.
Watch them. Learn from them. Respect what they do well.
Then get back to work on your own game.
UCLA taught me that talent does not guarantee anything. A team filled with future PGA TOUR players can still leave without an NCAA Championship. A player who feels great on the range can still shoot a number he does not like.
Golf always asks you to prove it.
That is what makes the game frustrating.
It is also what makes competing so rewarding.
By the time I reached the PGA TOUR, the names around me had changed and the stage was considerably bigger.
But I had already learned how to stand on a range surrounded by great players without feeling like I did not belong there.
I had done that at UCLA.
I knew I did not have to swing like them.
I did not have to play like them.
I had to know my game, trust it and compete.
And somewhere along the way, another lesson emerged that I could not have understood as a college player.
The people pushing you to become better may someday become the people you are most grateful to have shared the journey with.
We started as young golfers trying to earn spots on a college team. Some of us eventually competed against one another on the PGA TOUR. Years later, familiar faces began showing up again on PGA TOUR Champions.
The competition never went away.
Neither did the friendships.
That mindset and those relationships began for me at UCLA.
More than four decades later, I am grateful for both.