This year marks the golden anniversary of the record-breaking 33-stroke victory that not only brought Wake Forest its second consecutive NCAA team title, but also was the supposed catalyst of the change from 5-count-4 aggregate scoring (best four scores determined at the end of the tournament) to the daily scoring that is used throughout college golf today.

Spectators flocked to Ohio State’s Scarlet Course on that last day to watch the final round pairing of Jay Haas (Wake Forest) and Jerry Pate (Alabama) who had tied for low amateur honors at the US Open the previous week.

Curtis Strange, Wake Forest’s reigning NCAA individual champ, shot the best round of the tournament but fell just short of the Haas/Pate battle in the group behind. Pate missed his long birdie putt on the 72nd hole, leaving Haas with two putts for the individual title. If they had used the daily scoring instead, the Demon Deacons would have won by “only” 27 strokes.

Legendary Wake Forest Head Coach Jesse Haddock (below with Curtis Strange and Jay Haas in 1975) won his third and final NCAA team title a decade later at the 1986 championship held at the Demon Deacon’s own Bermuda Run GC.

Oklahoma State seemed in firm control leading into the final round, but word spread around the course late that the home team was making a run on their 20-stroke deficit. Despite Scott Verplank cruising to a four stroke individual victory, the rest of the Cowboys languished north of par while Wake Forest posted three scores in the red including a sizzling 66 from All-American Chris Kite.

The great writer Ron Balicki witnessed the disappointment Cowboy senior Scott Verplank felt for his team despite winning the individual title and wrote the following in his recollection of the tournament for Golfweek: “That’s when I first realized how much of a team sport college golf really is, and just how special of an event the NCAA Championship can be.”

The 1988-89 season was already an historic one even before competitors stepped foot on Oak Tree CC in Oklahoma. For the first time in college golf history, a series of three Regional qualifying tournaments were used to determine the NCAA championship field. There was plenty of drama as several top teams including Wake Forest, Georgia Southern, Tulsa, and Ohio State, failed to advance.

At nationals, Head Coach Gregg Grost had his Oklahoma Sooners in great position heading into the final day - scheduled for 36-holes due to weather - which was made even better when leader Clemson was forced to throw out Kevin Johnson’s score after round two. The NCAA committee ruling to disqualify the 36-hole tournament leader for failing to sign his scorecard ahead of media obligations was highly controversial to say the least.

Both Oklahoma and Arizona State freshman Phil Mickelson took advantage of the situation, the former capturing the team title by 19 strokes and the latter taking the individual title by four shots. 

Head Coach Steve Loy (below with Phil Mickelson) had one of his best lineups in 1990, including defending NCAA individual champion Phil Mickelson. Other expected favorites were Oklahoma State, Texas, and host Florida who had four seniors including Chris DiMarco and Dudley Hart.

Mickelson had recently won the Pac-10 individual title and was looking to become just the second sophomore after Ben Crenshaw of Texas in 1971-72 to successfully defend his NCAA title. He was one stroke behind a pair of FSU Seminoles entering the final round while the Sun Devils trailed the Gators by 11 strokes. ASU saved their best for last, shooting 9-under as a team behind Mickelson’s tournament-best 66.

Just a week after the Sun Devil women earned their first NCAA championship, the men did the same, making the first — and so far only — time that two teams from the same program won in the same year.

A few months later, Mickelson joined Jack Nicklaus as the only players (to that point) to win the NCAA individual and US Amateur titles in the same year. 

The 1995 NCAA championship was so good you could write a book about it; in fact, that’s exactly what someone did. Titled “The Last Putt”, authors Neil Hayes and Brian Murphy chronicled the enthralling 1994-95 season for Oklahoma State and defending NCAA champion Stanford, who were led by a young phenom named Tiger Woods.

Following an intense back and forth, the top two teams in the country found themselves tied at the conclusion of 72 holes after Woods missed a 20-foot birdie putt that would have made Stanford repeat champions. Five Stanford players faced-off against just four Oklahoma State Cowboys in a tournament-first 5-count-4 sudden-death playoff. OSU, who had finished long before Stanford, was down sophomore Leif Westerberg who hopped on a pre-planned flight out to England for the upcoming British Amateur.

Stanford counted four pars while OSU gained birdies from Chris Cox and Alan Bratton. The four overjoyed Cowboys received their trophies along with Auburn’s Chip Spratlin who had captured the individual title by a single stroke over OSU’s Chris Tidland.

The top team coming into the 2000 championship was Georgia Tech, anchored by Bryce Molder and 1997 US Amateur champ Matt Kuchar. At the halfway cut to the top 15 teams, Tech trailed behind Oklahoma State and Texas at the top of the board while Wake Forest put out the defending champion Georgia Bulldogs in a 5-count-4 playoff for the final spot.

Reigning US Amateur champ David Gossett (Texas) was sitting great with a third round 66 that put him at 199, but incredibly he lost three strokes to OSU’s Charles Howell whose 63 put him at 196, a stroke below Phil Mickelson’s 1992 record. Howell cruised to an individual title with a final round 69 that set more records at 23 under par. That low score proved important as the Cowboys finished tied with Georgia Tech through 72 holes.

Once again Coach Mike Holder was in a 5-count-4 playoff for the NCAA team title, and this time it was against his former assistant coach Bruce Heppler. The Cowboys prevailed just as they had five years earlier.  

Two very important changes went into effect for the 2008-09 postseason. First, the Regional sites were expanded from three to six with five teams advancing from each. The second change was even more consequential, the NCAA committee experimenting with using match play to determine the team title for the first time since World War I. Oklahoma State AD and committee chairman Mike Holder stated, “Match play has enjoyed tremendous success in the Ryder Cup and our committee hopes that spectators and television will enjoy the excitement generated by this form of scoring.”

They certainly got their wish, but to the detriment of the Cowboys. While spectators enjoyed seeing NC State’s Matt Hill capture the individual title, his eighth win of the season, they did not realize that Hudson Swafford accidentally signed for a higher score than he actually shot. This small mistake actually had a major effect as Georgia ended up facing the top seeded Oklahoma State in the quarterfinals instead of the Finals as many expected. Though that match certainly lived up to the billing, it clearly left a toll as the joyous Bulldogs were promptly defeated in their Semifinal match against Arkansas.

Texas A&M navigated the other side of the bracket and provided a thrilling Final match that came down to the final group. Bronson Burgoon’s miracle shot nearly dropped in the hole and moments later the Aggies were NCAA champs.

The 2014 championship marked several significant milestones, the most visible being the extensive TV coverage from the Golf Channel. Major weather interruptions forced officials to abandon a planned format change to for an individuals-only fourth round, and instead they stumbled on the audience appeal of televising the “Race to the Eight” matchplay teams.

Bad weather didn’t mean bad golf, and two of the top players in the country — Cameron Wilson (Stanford) and Ollie Schniederjans (Georgia Tech) — met in a playoff to decide the individual title. After three extra holes, Stanford had their first individual champion since Tiger Woods.

The Finals matchup between reigning NCAA champion Alabama Crimson Tide and Oklahoma State was everything television producers and viewers could have wanted. Each of the individual matches were compelling in their own way, but none more than Bama’s Robby Shelton (above) closing out Zach Olsen on the 18th green in a match that featured 21 threes on the scorecard and a stroke play score of 63 to 64!

In the end, Alabama successfully defended their title and became just the third — and most recent entering the 2025 championship — team to repeat in the last 50 years. 

The 2017-18 Oklahoma State Cowboys were dubbed the “Team of Destiny,” accumulating nine wins prior to hosting the NCAA championship. Orange-drenched OSU fans witnessed three straight days of course record-breaking 18-hole scores by non-home teams, but day four belonged to the Cowboys. Securing the #1 seed for matchplay ramped up the already sky-high pressure as they now sought to become the first top seed to successfully take the title.

Spectators were treated to bonus golf as Augusta’s Broc Everett downed Brandon Mancheno of Auburn met in a sudden-death playoff for the individual NCAA championship.

In an echo of 2009, the top two ranked teams — Oklahoma State and Texas A&M — met in the quarterfinals, but this time it went the Cowboys’ way. Things continued like that for the home team all the way through the Finals match against Alabama. Freshman Matthew Wolff’s shout of triumph (above) was practically drowned out from the roar of the 3,000-plus fans at Karsten Creek, and just like that destiny had been fulfilled.

In 2017, the NCAA golf committee put into motion a plan to provide more stability to the championships by having one site - Grayhawk Golf Club, home course for Arizona State — host the championships for three straight years (2020-2022). With the first year cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that three-year window shifted to 2021-2023. The trek out to the desert was the last for 38-year Clemson head coach Larry Penley who celebrated his final NCAA appearance with his senior, and newly crowned individual champion, Turk Pettit.

The Sun Devils secured the top seed for match play, but that #1 seed curse struck again as they were downed by Oklahoma in the Semifinals. The Sooners crashed into the Pepperdine Waves in a thrilling Finals match that included everything from unlikely comebacks to a timely hole-in-one.

Pepperdine had been the favorite ahead of the 2020 NCAA “championship that never was”, but incredibly they managed to capture the title a year later. The multi-year hosting plan went well enough that the Committee accepted the Omni La Costa proposal to host for the next three years, and perhaps permanently. 

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