LOS ANGELES – The UCLA men’s golf team will open the 2025-26 season competing at the Sahalee Players Championship at Sahalee Country Club in Seattle, Wash., on Saturday and Sunday (Sept. 6-7).
The upcoming season-opening tournament will begin the fourth season with head coach Armen Kirakossian leading the UCLA men’s golf program. The two-day, 54-hole stroke play tournament will feature 11 college programs plus individual competitors from the U.S. National Development Program. Played on Sahalee Country Club’s championship “South” and “North” nines, this event will feature 36 continuous holes on Saturday and 18 holes on Sunday. Follow the action online (link here) at Scoreboard, powered by Clippd.
UCLA’s first starting lineup of the 2025-26 season will feature one senior (Kyle An), one junior (Alex Papayoanou), two sophomores (Logan Kim, Baylor Larrabee) and one freshman (Tyler Loree). Bruins’ junior Luciano Conlan will be participating as an individual competitor.
“Anytime you get to start the season, it’s exciting,” Kirakossian said. “I love team golf and college golf. It’s better when it is going on and these tournaments are happening. This is what our guys train and practice for all their lives, to play tournament golf – and here we are before our first tournament. There is a lot of natural excitement built into that alone.”
UCLA’s Lineup: Kyle An, Baylor Larrabee, Alex Papayoanou, Tyler Loree and Logan Kim
UCLA’s Individual Competitor: Luciano Conlan
The Field: Arizona, Arizona State, Florida, North Carolina, Northwestern, Oregon, Pepperdine, San Diego State, Texas, UCLA, U.S. National Development Program, and Washington (host).
Par and Yardage: Sahalee Country Club is a par 72, 7,003-yard course
Reflections on UCLA’s Team
With a nine-person team ready for the upcoming fall season, fourth-year head coach Armen Kirakossian looks ahead to another exciting season of UCLA men’s golf.
“As far as our team makeup, it’s no mystery that Omar Morales and Pablo Ereño were major factors for us these last few years, and both of those guys are gone and graduated and now playing professional golf. With this group, there is excitement to see who steps up and plays a major role for us – that’s fun. Kyle An will be a senior and he has been trending in a nice direction during his junior year. Baylor Larrabee, now a sophomore, is coming off being named the Freshman of the Year in the Big Ten. We’ve got some new guys in the program, so I think more than anything, it’s fun to see who will take that next step.
“We have nine guys on our team this year, and qualifying was extremely competitive, probably some of the most competitive qualifying I’ve seen during my time at UCLA. That helps build into the natural excitement for the season. You’ve got competition, and competition breeds improvement and helps guys to push to the next level. We will lean into that. That should be a general theme of this year, with our guys competing really hard to make the trip and get on that flight to be at the next tournament. It’s often said, and I generally believe, that your practices should be harder than the competition. That’s a good thing. We’ll try to do our best to simulate competition at home amongst each other. It is nice that we have a deep team with nine competitive players. We can help to breed that competition at home. I’m excited to see how that can translate into our tournament performance. We’re looking forward to this trip, and it should be a lot of fun.”
UCLA’s Season Opener
This weekend’s tournament at Sahalee Country Club will mark the first of four fall competitions for the UCLA men’s golf program. Last season, UCLA opened its fall schedule at The Tindall, hosted at Aldarra Golf Club in Sammamish, Wash. The Bruins finished in fifth place out of 14 teams (-11, 841). As a senior last season, Pablo Ereno secured his first collegiate medal at the tournament, shooting 11-under 202 to earn co-championship honors. Following this weekend’s tournament at Sahalee Country Club, the Bruins will be back in action on Sept. 15-16 at The Wohali in Coalville, Utah.
2024-25 in Review
The Bruins concluded a successful 2024-25 golf campaign by advancing to the NCAA Championships for the first time since 2018. The Bruins finished in 20th place out of 30 teams, missing the first cut to advance in the championship tournament. As an individual who competed through Monday’s fourth round, Pablo Ereño became UCLA’s first golfer to have finished in the top 10 on the individual leaderboard at the NCAA Championships since Lorens Chan in 2014 (t-9th, in Hutchinson, Kansas). Ereño’s sixth-place individual finish was the best by any UCLA golfer since Patrick Cantlay finished in a tie for fourth place at the 2012 NCAA Championships (Pacific Palisades, Calif.).
Both Ereño and Morales secured collegiate medals during the 2024-25 season. Ereño won UCLA’s first event in the fall, capturing his first collegiate medal at The Tindall at Aldarra Golf Club. Morales won his third college medal by winning the Big Ten Championships in late April in Baltimore, at the Baltimore Country Club. The two seniors last season finished the 2025 collegiate campaign ranked No. 9 (Morales) and No. 10 (Ereño) in the PGA Tour University rankings (PGA TOUR U). Ereño climbed into the No. 10 position in the rankings by finishing in sixth place on the individual leaderboard at the NCAA Championships at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa. He shot 3-under 69 on Sunday and Monday to finish with a four-day score of 5-under 283.
Ereño and Morales were honored at the conclusion of the season on the NCAA Division I PING All-West Region team, as announced by the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA). The Bruins’ senior duo was also recognized on the same All-West Region team as juniors in 2023-24.
Ereño was honored as the Big Ten Men’s Golfer of the Year, while Baylor Larrabee earned Big Ten Freshman of the Year acclaim. IN addition, Armen Kirakossian was recognized as the Big Ten Coach of the Year in UCLA’s first season competing in the conference. The Bruins won the Big Ten Championships, hosted in Baltimore, with a score of 2-over 842 – just one stroke ahead of Illinois (3-over 843). The final day of competition at Baltimore Country Club presented consistent winds at 12-18 miles per hour, gusting to as high 35 miles per hour.
Morales shot even par (70) on Sunday at the Big Ten Championships, sinking a putt on the 18th hole to hold at par before awaiting the results of Oregon’s Greyson Leach. Morales finished the tournament at 7-under 203, while Leach carded 4-under 206. Leach needed to birdie the final three holes to have any chance of tying Morales for the top spot (Leach had a bogey on the 17th hole).
UCLA’s Three Newcomers
The Bruins’ program has added three incoming golfers for the 2025-26 season – sophomore Logan Kim and freshmen Josh Kim and Tyler Loree.
Josh Kim – A graduate of De La Salle High School (Concord, Calif.), Josh Kim helped lead his high school program to its eighth Northern California Regional boys golf crown in 2025. Kim, who captured the CIF/NCGA NorCal Boys’ individual title in 2024, finished as the runner-up in a two-person playoff in the same CIF tournament in 2025. He won the 2024 Bubba Conlee Junior Invitational Championship, finishing 5-over 221 at the tournament with round scores of 74-75-72 (two strokes in the lead over a pair of second-place competitors). Kim was a recipient of the 2025 Byron Nelson International Junior Award, which honors outstanding junior golfers from around the world who have excelled in competitive play, academics and in co-curricular activities away from athletics.
Logan Kim – Hailing from nearby Altadena, Calif., Logan Kim will be competing this season as a sophomore at UCLA. He spent the 2024-25 season as a freshman at Stanford University, where he took part in 10 competitions for the Cardinal. Kim registered a scoring average of 72.7 as a freshman. He finished in a tie for 24th place at the NCAA Amherst Regional in Virginia in May of 2025 (+2, 212). Kim recorded his best result last season with a 13th-place (tie) finish at The Prestige Individual in Indio, Calif. He shot 8-over 224 at the 54-hole tournament, which took place at The Golf Club at Terra Lago.
Tyler Loree – Tyler Loree, from Kula, Hawaii (Maui), finished among the top 13 competitors at the Western Junior Championship in June and at the USWING MOJING Junior World Golf Championships in July. He added one major title to his golf accolades with a win at the 2025 Hawai’i State Amateur Men’s Overall Division (open and mid-amateur), securing a four-shot victory at even par. That win helped him earn a spot at the 2025 U.S. Amateur Championship at The Olympic Club in San Francisco. A graduate of Seabury Hall in Maui, Loree became the first Maui Interscholastic League player to win two state high school titles. In addition, he became the fifth youth golfer in Hawai’i history to defend the individual state title.
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