I was fortunate enough to play NCAA Division I college golf. If you give me the opportunity to do it again, I would.
The travel, the team environment, the pressure, the practice … there is nothing like it.
But every now and then, a story comes across my desk that reminds me of how much college golf has changed in the last 20 years.
The NCAA Men’s Championships concluded last week at Omni La Costa’s North Course in California, with Auburn edging out UCLA for the national title. The preparation after the golf tournament was what caught my attention.
You cannot show up early and learn the course
Teams are not allowed early access to the NCAA Finals site prior to the championship window. Under the NCAA’s current course access policy, players and coaches cannot play, practice or even walk the course ahead of time, outside of narrow exceptions. They still get the official practice round once they arrive, but the old idea of checking the course beforehand is off the table.
In other words, you can’t exactly pull a Rory and make Augusta feel like your home course before the tournament even starts.
When I played, preparing for a course you hadn’t seen meant a yard book, maybe a chat with someone who had played there before, and a lot of educated guesswork. You learned quickly once you arrived. You wrote where you should not get lost. You tried to figure out which holes fit your eye and which would make you uncomfortable.
Today, there is much less guesswork.
The new practice round takes place indoors
Programs are now using simulator technology and releasing monitor data to prepare for golf courses they haven’t physically played.
Arizona, for example, used PREDICTION environmental simulation to adjust for the difference between exercising at approximately 2,500 feet of altitude and competing in the heavier sea-level air of Carlsbad.
A shot that flies a number high can produce a very different number at sea level. For college players trying to win a national championship, the wrong guess from even half of the clubhouse matters.
The next part is the course map.
Foresight-equipped simulators had La Costa North available digitally, allowing players to record virtual rounds before their official tournament. They could see firing, approaches, landing zones, green complexes and trouble spots without breaching access restrictions.
This is a very different kind of preparation than I remember.
Technology may not yet strike for you
I don’t think that makes college golf any easier.
It makes preparation smarter.
There is no technology yet that can hit for you. You still have to stay on top, deal with nerves, pick a target and commit. Pressure doesn’t care how good your simulator session was when course conditions come into play.
Players can arrive with a better understanding of how far the ball should fly, what the course demands of them, and where they may need to play more conservatively. Coaches can start building a game plan before the team ever gets on the property. Yard control, course management and environmental adjustments are no longer things that have to wait for the official practice round.
