All it took was a few hours of howling Santa Ana winds to blow away the No. 21 Cal men's golf team's chances of winning The Prestige at PGA West.

In a bittersweet end to the Bears' best fall campaign in recent memory, Cal finished in seventh place in the two-day tournament in La Quinta, Calif.

"We got off to a very slow start," coach Steve Desimone said. "We were 18, 19-over par in the first hour, and that's going to take you out of any chance of winning. No question we started on the toughest part of the golf course--holes four through seven--no doubt about that. We just didn't do a very good job. There's no way to sugar-coat it. We didn't handle it very well."

The Bears ended up at 33-over, a number that took its biggest hit from the wind-affected first-round scores. After the initial 18 holes, however, Cal was able to tighten up its short game with improved results.

"(Yesterday) the course was there to be taken, no doubt about it," Desimone said. "If you made some putts today, you were going to run right up the leaderboard. If you just played solid golf, you'll do what we did. You'll finish somewhere between even and five or six over par. We played good, solid golf but we didn't play great golf, and it wasn't enough to move us up."

In a 16-team field that featured five Golfweek top-25 teams, including No. 4 Washington and No. 12 Stanford, unranked TCU took the title at 3-under.

Sophomore Eric Mina put in the top effort for the Bears for the second tournament in a row. His 5-over was good for a tie for 15th place. Senior Michael Jenson took 23rd at 8-over, and senior George Gandranata rounded out the top-25 with his 9-over tally.

The finish at The Prestige initially cast something of a pall over coach and team alike, but the letdown was temporary at best.

"If you asked me to grade (the fall season), I'd grade it a B-plus," Desimone said. "I think any time you win a tournament, any time you're in the top 25, you've got virtually every one of your players finishing in the top 10 at some point, you've got to say overall it's been a good, solid fall. Certainly disappointing that we didn't finish better here, we didn't play a little better today, but I don't think that puts any kind of a damper on what the guys have accomplished so far."

Cal opened the season on a high note, winning the San Francisco Invitational with its lineup of veterans Jenson and Gandranata, experienced sophomores Stephen Hale and Mina, and junior transfer John Murphy, formerly of Old Dominion. The Bears closed out the month of September by taking third in the Wolverine Intercollegiate and second in the Husky Invite.

"We started out pretty well, and everyone was really positive," Jenson said. "We've got a good group of guys here, and I think we're really looking forward to practicing and working hard over the next couple months and getting ready for the spring."

The Bears don't tee off again until February 2, and they plan to utilize the three-month hiatus to continue to improve their short game in preparation for what they hope might turn out to be a national championship run.

"I don't want to jinx us and say we're going to do this-and-that, but I think we're going to do really well," Mina said. "We're so deep that if someone's off, we have a bunch of guys who can come in and play well and are going to play well throughout. Golf is the kind of sport where there are ups and downs, and I'm sure we'll have our ups and downs, but hopefully we just stay hot all year."

Tags: CAL MEN'S GOLF, MICHAEL JENSON, STEVE DESIMONE, ERIC MINA