October 12, 2026 • by David Tenneson
Define crazy. It’s not enough to simply say that the first full month of competition in the 2026-27 college golf season was crazy. I mean, all of these things happened, more or less, but it’s the totality of banal facts which reveals the absurdity. The stereogram of men’s and women’s tournament results hides something deeper, and the more of those results we can take in at once, the richer the craziness becomes. The season is young, and things will undoubtedly regress towards the median of the crazy scale. However, I invite you to stare deeply into the pictures of things as they stand now, and see what stands out.
The fall of freshman year is chaotic and disorienting for any student, the fact that more than 200 men and women across all NCAA, NAIA, and NJCAA divisions not only competed well but also finished in one of the top two spots in a college golf tournament this month is simply astounding. The sheer volume of team social media posts proudly boasting of their freshmen performances is a testament to how well the first years are contributing to their teams immediately. We would need a much longer article to do justice to every one of those performances, but let’s begin with a few that help explain why the early season has already become so wonderfully absurd.
It’s hard to have a better first - or, frankly, any - month in college golf than Georgia Tech freshman Max Emberson has had. The ACC Player of the Month opened with four straight rounds with an eagle, three rounds of 65 or better, two individual trophies, and a 33.33% Gas Pedal rate - following a birdie with another birdie or better one-third of the time.
In his first two tournaments, the Folds of Honor Collegiate and OFCC/Fighting Illini Invitational, Emberson avoided every par-4 bogey and opened both with 63. His 7-under round set the American Dunes tournament record; at Olympia Fields, hosting the event on its South Course for the first time, another freshman, Oscar Couilleau on the winning Arizona State team, went even lower with an 8-under 62. Couilleau also made four eagles in his first four rounds, including two en route to that opening back-nine 30. With the field averaging 68.96, he still gained strokes in every three-hole split.
Emberson closed OFCC with 65 to share medalist honors with seniors Connor Williams (Arizona State), Ben Gregg (Texas Tech), and Max Herendeen (Illinois). For Herendeen, it offered redemption after a closing 78 at Sahalee knocked him out of contention. Overall, his Momentum stats show fourth-year poise: Gas Pedal on one-third of his 108 competitive holes, strokes surrendered after birdie or better just 3.45% of the time, and a 79% Bounce-Back rate.
What no one could have predicted was how Washington senior Finn Koelle won at Sahalee. About an hour before the other contenders finished, his final swing produced an ace on the par-3 ninth - the field’s hardest hole that day. The ball found the hole, his teammates found him in disbelief, and the 2.6 strokes gained with one swing proved decisive.
Speaking of putting the pedal down, reigning NCAA Division III individual champion Sebi Aliaga of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps made 24 birdies against four bogeys at the CA State Intercollegiate. His 20-under 196 shattered program records. CMS must wait until spring to directly test other expected contenders, including Huntingdon and Illinois Wesleyan, the team it defeated in a playoff for the NCAA crown.
Early clashes at the Gate City Invite and Division III Fall Preview both went Huntingdon’s way. The Hawks’ 1.64 Deviation Average measures round-to-round difference from their scoring average; they have also beaten the field average in 91% of their rounds, with three players at 100%. Myles Cunningham, co-medalist at Gate City and runner-up at the Preview, has a 100% Bounce-Back rate, 5% Drop-Off rate, and 1.78 Deviation Average.
Huntingdon’s Drop Score Differential - the gap between its final counting and discarded scores - is 3.5 strokes. Florida’s is just 0.58 through Sahalee and OFCC. Yet the Gators - and everyone else - trailed Oklahoma State at Sahalee, where four Cowboys, including Walker Cuppers Preston Stout and Ethan Fang, finished inside the top five. OFCC belonged to Arizona State, which collectively played the 18th hole in 17-under, gaining 7.8 strokes on the field across three rounds. Williams’ final eagle secured both the two-stroke team victory and his share of medalist honors.
Emberson wasn’t the only freshman collecting trophies. San Diego State’s Brayden Forte beat reigning Freshman of the Year and Walker Cupper Kihei Akina at both the Vuori and William H. Tucker invitationals. At the latter, he shared honors with New Mexico’s Johnnie Clark, who opened with passport stamps - and trophies - from three countries: Japan’s Pan Pacific University Golf Super League, the Canadian Collegiate, and UNM’s own Tucker.
I could spend 10,000 words detailing other freshman exploits and still not cover September. Butler’s Nicholas Brooks opened his college career with two bogey-free rounds, then made just one bogey in the third to co-medal at the RedHawk Intercollegiate. Eastern Michigan’s Parn Sarasmut tied the program record at 16-under 200 in his debut. Cameron Kuchar won in his second TCU start, beating father Matt’s pace by one tournament. Texas freshman Brooks Harper clinched the Jackson T. Stephens Cup’s winning match-play point, adding a team title to the individual stroke-play honors shared by Matt Comegys and Daniel Bennett.
Liberty’s 1.69 Deviation Average and 1.89 Drop Score Differential accompanied consecutive individual titles: Michael Lugiano shared Bearcat Invitational honors with Kuchar, then freshman Austin Krahn won the Bryan Bros. Collegiate. Team champion Ole Miss had three players in the top 10, including Eduardo Matarazzo - a Barry transfer who finished his freshman season ranked No. 11 in Division II.
Lee, last season’s Division II semifinalist, lost NCAA individual champion Drew Zielinski to graduation but already has two sophomores rewriting its record book. Tucker Wick set school records with 62 and a 10-under 200 at Lake Lanier - yet finished eight strokes behind North Georgia’s Ashton Eubanks, whose 18-under 192 broke program and tournament records. Billy Boroughs followed with his first title at Sunnehanna.
Reigning champion Florida Southern won the National Preview by five strokes, helped by Jack VanderSchuur’s bogey-free closing 64. Georgia Southwestern, the only other team under par overall, posted a 19-under 269 at PGA National Resort, this season’s NCAA championship site.
Both teams, along with Lee, face the South/Southeast Regional as their first postseason hurdle. Four of the last five national champions advanced from this regional; all six championships since the canceled 2020 event have featured one of its representatives in the match-play final. This year’s venue, Lake Jovita, hosted its own preview alongside the National Preview. Lincoln Memorial reached 51-under behind a second-round 264, or 24-under. Henry Drake’s 18-under 198 won by six over freshman teammate Henry Linley.
Then the scoring turned. Multiple events saw final-round field averages rise at least two strokes above their lowest-scoring round. At both the South/Southeast Regional Preview and Colonial’s Ben Hogan Collegiate, final-round averages exceeded 73.5, multiple par 4s averaged above 4.40, and at least one par 5 played over par.
Ben Hogan brought many of September’s threads together: seven of last year’s eight NCAA match-play teams, 12 of the 16 participants coming off trips to La Costa, and eight Walker Cuppers among approximately 80 players - the same Walker Cup count as OFCC. North Carolina’s Niall Shiels Donegan opened with five straight birdies to put 59 in sight. His 9-under 61 came against a 71.76 field average, placing it alongside Emberson’s 10.01 strokes gained with an 8-under 63 at Folds of Honor. Stout’s opening 63 was the next-best Ben Hogan score; no one broke 67 in either remaining round.
Texas Tech’s Adam Bresnu shot both of those 67s after opening with 69, winning by one over Georgia’s J.D. Culbreth. His first Division I title followed nine wins in two seasons at Odessa College and both the 2025 NJCAA Jack Nicklaus Player of the Year and Gary Player International Golfer of the Year awards. It also earned an exemption into next year’s Charles Schwab Challenge. Teammate Ben Gregg, already an OFCC co-medalist, has one of the strongest Bounce-Back (90.48%) and Drop-Off (13.79%) combinations among players with more than six rounds.
The Ben Hogan team title - and the winning milkshakes, per team tradition - belonged to Jay Seawell’s Alabama Crimson Tide. William Jennings and Nicholas Gross tied Stout for third at 208, or 2-under. More encouraging than any single finish is the scoring help throughout a lineup that has lacked consistency in recent seasons. Alabama’s Deviation Average through three events is 1.19, down from 2.22 last year; its Drop Score Differential has fallen from 2.61 to 2.11.
Those numbers lack the spectacle of a final-shot ace, four straight rounds with an eagle, or trophies from three countries. But they belong in the same picture: freshmen skipping the adjustment period, records proving insufficient to win, and teams finding strength in the space between their counting and discarded scores. The totality is the point. For Alabama, the next step is turning September’s steadiness into a return to La Costa - and, perhaps, the sweetest milkshake of them all.
David Tenneson is a college golf historian and the face behind 5count4.