When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Golf Digest has posted their annual college golf guide and man are they getting serious about this. My alma mater did wonderfully, so I love the new tabulation system.
Remarkably, they didn't hold Ken Starr or Mel Gibson's Malibu shenanigans against us!
And I really love the west coast bias. Nice to see for a change.
You can go to the men's and women's lists compiled by Brett Avery here.
Golf World's Ryan Herrington is blogging from the NCAA's while Golfweek does their blog thing too. And the live scores can be followed best (I think) through Golfstat.
My alma mater missed by two, so like any good intensely self involved American, my interest is already fading. Because it's all about me.
Now, these are not extras from Master and Commander nor the Danish chapter of Gay Men Who Love Pirates of the Caribbean (Would that be GMWPC?). Actually, these are Golfweek's writers doing the whole Williamsburg, Virginia thing to kick off their NCAA Men's Golf Championship coverage.
Please, your captions at their expense...
I heard from a college coach today who took great exception to Hank Haney's piece on college golf not necessarily being the best place to prep players for the PGA Tour. The coach said the sense of entitlement with today's kids is already out of whack and pieces like this will only make their life more difficult, but worse than that, create ridiculous expectations from kids.
The scoring format and playing fields of college golf also impede progress. At most college tournaments, teams play with five players but count only the best four scores from each day. That can cause a player having a bad round to get in the habit of packing it in rather than battling (though that might mean he's not in the lineup for the next tournament).
Right. Like players always know which five are going to count. And let's say they do, even so, they want to stay in the line up and protect their scoring average. Players do not dog it because of the five-counting-four-scores system.
And in my experience, many college events were played on courses with little rough. Hitting it crooked without being punished is not good training for what players will face as pros.
Uh, haven't we just been hearing that there is no correlation between driving accuracy and financial success?
In the March, 2007 Golf Digest, Hank Haney looks at the state of American golf and questions whether the college golf system is helping produce the best possible players.
More interesting is Ryan Herrington's blog post at GolfDigest.com taking aim at some of Haney's points.
Gary Van Sickle looks at the best under-30 American golfers, and notes:
College golf eats its young in the U.S. Coaches aren't eager for their players to make big changes to improve -- they need a good finish at next week's tournament. And since the college season almost never ends -- September to mid-November, February to June -- there isn't time to worry about long-term goals. It's all about next week's or next month's tournament.
In Australia, regional sports institutes do just the opposite. They provide coaching -- mental and physical -- and nutrition and conditioning and competition. It's all about building better athletes. The result is, Australia is flooding golf with far more top-level players than a country of its size has any right to produce. American players need more resources and more down-time to focus on getting better for the long run.
Now, American collegiate golfers are playing quality events on decent courses, while also competing prior to those events through team qualifiers. They get free equipment. Most are following conditioning programs laid out by school trainers.
Meanwhile, international players are still populating the college ranks, with Paul Casey and to a lesser extent, Camillo Villegas having breakout years after U.S. college golf careers.
But does Van Sickle have a point about the long term approach issue? After all, this is a short term, instant gratification culture.
I still contend that the international players are more imaginative and talented all-around players because they've been exposed to a variety of designs and course setups.
Thoughts?
Golf Digest unveils their second (annual?) college golf ranking, again breaking down schools by golf and academics (spelled acadmeic twice when I checked in).
Refreshingly, there seems to be a West Coast bias to the list, at least based on my initial reading of it. That's a first!
Oklahoma State...because they need another title like UCLA needs another basketball men's volleyball crown. And OSU redshirt freshman Jonathon Moore took the individual title too.
Final team scores are here, final individual scores here, and Ron Balicki's Golfweek.com game story is here.
My latest Golfobserver.com column on the strange (but exciting) year in college golf, is now posted.
Ryan Herrington makes his NCAA picks at GolfDigest.com, while Ron Balicki gives you the odds for every team in the field. Well, his odds.
If you want to track the scores, here's the link. While tee times can be found here.
You could watch the stellar Golfweek TV coverage of the NCAA regionals and be reminded why writers should stick to writing and coaches to coaching, or just read the excellent game stories on each region.
Ron Balicki reports on the west where Loyola Marymount (Layola on yesterday's GolfweekTV) pulled off the biggest upset in regional's history. Lance Ringler reports from the central and Rex Hoggard checks in from the east.
Golfweek's Ron Balicki tries to explain some of the absurdities in the NCAA golf committee's tournament selection setup, namely sending Top 5 teams Florida and UCLA out of their regions (and to each others regions).
Ryan Herrington is even less forgiving in his latest Golf Digest college golf blog post.
The regionals kick off Thursday, with 54 holes played at three sites: Sand Ridge, Lake Nona and Tucson National.
For those interested in the NCAA Div. I regionals, here's the breakdown of where the committees are sending teams in the new format that attempts to offset regional imbalances.
Ron Balicki writes about America's finest college coaches meeting this week to bicker over rangefinders and their (still) lousy NCAA regional system.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
