How Texas golf is the host of the NCAA championships on a course 1,300 miles away | Bohls
- Texas golf coach John Fields has won two men's national championships but has a vision of a greater legacy for the game.
- College golf needed a neutral site for its championships, and Texas' Chris Del Conte and Bob Rowling came through.
- Legendary Oklahoma State golf coach Mike Holder sees the NCAA golf championship anchored in California as the "amateur version of the Masters."
Just not in Austin.
In fact, nowhere near Austin.
The tournament, featuring the top 30 golf teams in the country, including Fields’ Longhorns, will be at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., a few long Bryson DeChambeau drives away from San Diego. Yeah, Texas is hosting, just some 1,300 miles away.
Welcome to new-age hosting in the 21st century.
The genesis of the idea came about five years ago when no California schools, not even in the San Diego area, stepped forward with bids to host the event moving forward. So Fields enlisted the support of former Oklahoma State athletic director and legendary golf coach Mike Holder and suggested to longtime Longhorns megadonor Bob Rowling that “it would be a good idea to host the national championship in Southern California.”
And Rowling, the billionaire sole owner of 47 Omni hotels who once gave $25 million to the Texas business school, said why not? Then Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte gave his blessing as well. And so did the NCAA, which approved it, and the plan was off and running.
More:Anonymous coaches bashing Texas Longhorns QB Quinn Ewers is unwarranted | Bohls
“The schools in the area didn’t want to do it,” Del Conte said. “I can’t give the Rowling family enough kudos. They spent a significant amount of money. But the vision came from Fields.”
Coaching legend: 'This will transform college golf'
Holder, who won eight national championships with the Cowboys, has lent a helping hand to the organization of this and gushes about the future.“This will transform college golf,” Holder said. “It’s going to take it from a very, very significant amateur event to the premier amateur event in all of athletics. In fact, I think it has a chance to become the amateur version of the Masters. There are so many things that make the Masters what it is, but one of the biggest is that they play it at the same place every year. I think it’s inevitable it will be a permanent site.”
And a challenging site at that.
Thanks to a huge $20 million renovation by famed architect Gil Hanse and partner Jim Wagner as well as a $5.5 million redo of the practice facility, short-game area and driving range, the course will serve as home for NCAA men’s and women’s golf.
Maybe forever. Kind of like golf’s version of the College World Series.
That’s where Fields, in his 27th season as Texas coach, came up with the notion of piggybacking on the birth of the College World Series, which has kept that crown jewel of baseball in Omaha, Neb., since 1950. While it’s been a vast undertaking, Fields thinks it has been well worth it as he and others hope to re-create baseball’s successful trajectory for the growing sport that is college golf.
Like volleyball and softball, college golf is exploding. Take the just-completed PGA Championships at Valhalla. The top five finishers, including San Diego State product Xander Schauffele, who beat SMU’s DeChambeau on the 72nd hole to win his first major, all played college golf. So did 15 of the top 22 on the final leaderboard.
More:LISTEN: Texas softball's Teagan Kavan on Texas A&M; Texas baseball, end of LHN
And Fields saw this as a chance to give back and make college golf even more high-profile.
Thus was born the College World Golf Championships Foundation Inc. It’s a mouthful of a title.
Transforming a course, down to blades of grass
Fields pushed for the new nonprofit entity with his daughter, April Workman, as the executive director and Fields on the board of directors, but that doesn’t mean he’s close to giving up his position of coaching the Longhorns, who are gunning for their fifth national title and Fields’ third. That said, he’s made about 16 trips to Carlsbad to oversee the progress.The NCAA awarded La Costa the site even when there wasn’t really a golf course considering the vast makeover. Hanse’s team completely stripped the layout that had been in place since 1965. Club director Dustin Irwin said they moved fairways; added six tee boxes per hole to benefit the collegians, 3,000 members and hotel guests alike; sprigged nine holes and resodded the rest with bentgrass; and pretty much rebuilt a flexible tract that can play 6,300 yards for the women and a shade under 7,500 for the men.
“He changed everything,” Holder said. “Every blade of grass, every bunker, every green.”
Before they ripped it up, though, chief of sales Dan Surette said Hanse brought in a sampling of men’s and women’s golf coaches to walk the course and ask them for suggestions. This week, Surette got ringing endorsements from women’s coaches about the quality of the course and the strategic nature it demands.
“Omni wants this to be the best amateur event in the world,” Surette said. “It was a big commitment.”
More:Texas baseball certainly won't host a regional without Big 12 tourney win | Golden
The advantages of playing at a neutral site
And college golf gained an anchor with a new site for 2024 through 2026. Perhaps even a permanent one?“Oh, that’s absolutely the plan,” Fields said. “We’ve also bid for it in 2027 and 2028. We just need to hit a home run the first year.”
All parties signed off on the premise for a number of reasons. Those include the likelihood of perfect weather, a conducive Pacific Coast time zone to allow the Golf Channel to air the competition up to six hours a day and in prime time back east, and an all-inclusive resort that could house every single coach, golfer, television employee and administrative staffer involved in the event, with 600 completely remodeled rooms on site.
But the playing field needed to be even for all.
“I think there’s been a need for a neutral site, but anyone who wants to host it had a vested interest,” Holder said. “I think it’s inevitable it will be a permanent site.”
More:Beaten in its Big 12 finale, No. 24 Texas shifts its focus to the NCAA regionals
That as much as any factor was a driving force for this idea so a school wouldn’t have an extra advantage as when it was hosted the previous three years at Grayhawk Golf Club, Arizona State's home course. Even though they’d played their course 81 times, the Sun Devils were vanquished by none other than Fields’ Longhorns for the 2022 national championship.
That said, it was a huge recruiting benefit for ASU to host the event for three years, and Fields said it played a huge role in the Sun Devils landing future PGA Tour golfer Preston Summerhays even though Texas was trying hard to lure him. Yeah, the school that has spawned six legendary golfers who have won 102 PGA tournaments and 10 majors championships. But Texas still whipped ASU, including Summerhays, who was a freshman on that 2022 club.
Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth, who have five majors between them, including three Masters, are big selling points for UT golf. But the Longhorns couldn’t overcome ASU’s perks of hosting the national championship for three straight years.
“I think I came within a whisker of getting him,” Fields said of Summerhays, “but the deciding factor was that he was going to get to play the national championship a couple of times on his own golf course.”
And other coaches across the country wanted to avoid that type of overwhelming recruiting advantage. Fields estimates the back-to-back women’s and men’s championships over consecutive weeks cost somewhere between $2 million and $3 million a year.
“Loved the place, and the people there did a good job,” Fields said of Grayhawk. “But it’s 110 degrees. Truth be known, you could cook an egg on those cart paths.”
Nor was it a fan-friendly location for galleries.
More:Texas softball slugger Reese Atwood named one of three finalists for national player of year
Taking a needed leap of faith
Last edited:
