About a week ago, Stanford women’s golf coach Anne Walker came to a halt when she looked down at her watch and felt an immediate connection to the May 18 date facing back at her.
Was it someone’s birthday? A doctor’s appointment? Time for an oil change?
“You know that gut feeling you get when you know you are missing something?” Walker said. “And then I realized it was national championship week.”
That empty feeling is permeating through the entire college golf community. The women’s NCAA Championship, originally scheduled to end Wednesday, and the men’s NCAA Championship, meant to conclude June 3, have been canceled for two months. The host site, Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, is open for golfers, dine-in restaurant-goers and small concerts on the clubhouse lawn, but school colors and team spirit are conspicuous in their absence. This was to be the first of three consecutive NCAA championships held at Grayhawk, making Arizona State a recurring host at the 36-hole public facility.
But long before one of golf’s most organic and exciting events comes to the Valley of the Sun in 2021, college golf must wrestle with disappointment and uncertainty.
There will be no individual or team champions, which is particularly sad given the positive momentum from the past several editions of the event. Golf Channel has provided television coverage since 2014, offering glimpses at current PGA Tour stars such as Bryson DeChambeau, Aaron Wise and last year’s NCAA champion Matthew Wolff. Even more gratifying has been the superb drama delivered in match play. Whether it was the Oregon men’s team successfully defending its home course against Texas in 2016 or the Duke women’s squad edging rival Wake Forest last year in Arkansas, the memories have been plentiful.
Instead of another showcase tournament, coaches and players are coping with a “dead period” bereft of team gatherings or active recruiting. The only real connections at the moment are phone calls and virtual Zoom meetings.
“Our course here at Karsten Creek has stayed open and we have some of our kids here able to play, but you can’t really interact with them,” said Alan Bratton, head coach of the Oklahoma State men’s team. “You just kind of see them in passing and talk to them on the phone.”
Bratton says that his players have started looking forward to next season, but that future remains murky.
On the positive side, there is general optimism based on increased COVID-19 testing nationwide, a long list of notable institutions announcing their intentions to have students return to campus this fall and a recent NCAA vote that officially lifts a moratorium on football and basketball workouts starting June 1. In the golf world, the PGA Tour appears confident for an early June return to competition and the National Golf Foundation is reporting that roughly 95 percent of the nation’s courses are open for play.
The American Junior Golf Association, where many college golfers cut their teeth, has pushed its restart up from June 22 to June 7. It hopes to run seven events a week through mid-December. Walker sees one AJGA pandemic alteration that could make its way into college golf in the near future.
“They are having all of their players input their own scores for live scoring,” Walker said. “That’s been a technological advancement that hasn’t really caught on because a lot of people are against it, but it could be a long-term gain because it cuts down on the need for volunteers.”
The average athletic department derives about 75 to 85 percent of its revenue from football, according to a recent ESPN report that states $4 billion would be lost if football is not played. Golf programs across the country will be in deep trouble if such a scenario occurs.
Also of great interest to the college golf community is next month’s Golfweek Myrtle Beach Collegiate, which is open to men and women who were on college rosters this past year, as well as incoming freshmen.
Still, while confidence builds, so does fear of the unknown.
The biggest concern, aside from the health and safety of college golfers, is the economic piece of the equation. Athletic directors across the country acknowledge that a canceled or severely limited college football season would have dire impacts to budgets that were already harmed greatly by college basketball not being able to finish. The average athletic department derives about 75 to 85 percent of its revenue from football, according to a recent ESPN report that states $4 billion would be lost if football is not played. Golf programs across the country will be in deep trouble if such a scenario occurs.
“We’re all hoping that we can rally our fan base and things break in our way where football season goes as close to normal as possible,” Bratton said.
But even before the fate of college football is decided, some athletic programs are in peril. According to Lead1 Association, a survey of more than 100 athletic directors showed that less than half carry emergency financial reserves for a crisis. By operating with thin margins, many athletic departments can’t survive without cutting expenses.
Recognizing this, more than two dozen conference commissioners asked the NCAA to temporarily waive the requirement that each Division I school must sponsor a minimum of 16 sports. The proposal for a blanket waiver didn’t pass, although schools will have the opportunity to state their cases individually.
Regardless, college golf is being threatened. Look no further than the University of Akron, which cut the men’s golf team so it could shed 23 percent of its athletics budget.
“Today is a terrible day for so many,” the team’s head coach David Trainor tweeted earlier this month. “To our current student-athletes – I am so sorry this has happened to you.”
Whether Akron is one of a few or one of many likely will be decided by how the fall unfolds, but virtually all college golf programs that move forward will need to cut travel expenses. Coaches say there will be more regional play and less tournaments in places such as Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Mexico.
“With any sort of crisis, I feel like there is a short-term adjustment,” Walker said. “I just heard from Virginia, which normally hosts an event in Mexico, and they canceled that tournament for next year. From talking to ACC coaches, it sounds like they are primarily driving (to events) and that is pretty unheard of. … People have to accommodate to fit the bigger picture, but we’re waiting to see how the next six months play out to see exactly what that looks like.”
Like everything else during the pandemic, it’s difficult to make concrete statements about college golf.
The hope is for something that resembles normalcy, however limited that has to be.