April 3, 2025 • by David Tennesson / Photography: WesternCollegiate.golf
It’s the close of a beautiful Spring afternoon on one of the most immaculately well-maintained courses most people have ever seen. The tournament winner gives an emotional sigh after successfully navigating the tricky undulating Alister Mackenzie designed greens, claiming his coveted jacket.
No this isn’t Georgia and the jacket isn’t green, instead our winner proudly smiles for pictures in his blue letterman jacket near the Pasatiempo clubhouse in Santa Cruz, California. Welcome to the 78th annual Western Intercollegiate, one of the longest running and most prestigious college golf tournaments on the regular season calendar.
When talking about a nearly 80-year-old college golf event, it may be surprising to note there was actually an earlier unrelated tournament with the same name. The previous Western Intercollegiate was a precursor of sorts to the Big Ten golf conference championship and existed before WWI (yes, 1 not 2!), ran by a subset of the “western” schools - Northwestern, Illinois, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Michigan - under the name Western Intercollegiate Golf Association. The “western” naming convention was dropped not long after WWI and the geographically-accurate Western (coast) schools eventually embraced college golf in earnest in the 1930s.
Marion Hollins’ World Golf Hall of Fame induction in 2022 came 101 years after her US Women’s Amateur victory, however the star athlete, who captained the inaugural Curtis Cup match in 1932, is recognized today for far more than just her golf abilities. Among many other pioneering accomplishments, Hollins collaborated with legendary architect Alister MacKenzie to create Cypress Point which opened in 1928.
A year later, the pair brought to life Hollins’ dream project known as Pasatiempo — a Spanish word that can be translated as a “relaxed passage of time” — quickly recognized as one of the best golf courses in the world, featuring the magnificent green structures Dr. MacKenzie would similarly employ later at famed Augusta National Golf Club. The first group to play Pasatiempo included Marion Hollins, Bobby Jones, Glenna Collett, and Cyril Tolley, perhaps one of the greatest foursomes to ever open a course.
In 1947, the Northern California Golf Association and Pasatiempo conceived of a tournament to be held over the Easter week vacation for all of the official (male) college and university golf teams in the area. What started as a competition between nine colleges quickly grew to 40-plus schools entering anywhere from one to six players.
The likes of Stanford, San Jose State, and California were already heavily involved in NCAA golf and annually competed in the Northern California Intercollegiate as it was known until around 1960. The reigning NCAA champion Stanford team took the first NCI in 1947. The next year, San Jose State won the team title (above) and then went on to win the NCAA Championship. The Spartans were led by 1948 NCAA medalist Morgan Fottrell (above, third from right) who had won the match play portion of that very first NCI.
The tournament format has changed several times over the years. In the early days, when the NCAA championship consisted of team stroke play as a qualifier for individual match play, the NCI adopted the same with 18 holes of stroke play followed by an individual match play bracket navigated (twice) by the likes of San Jose State's Ken Venturi (third from left, below).
From 1958-1967 the tournament dropped the match play and changed its name to the Western Intercollegiate, where the first 36 holes of (up to) 6-count-4 play determined the team title and the final 36 holes determined the individual title.
From 1968 onward it was a 54-hole event to determine both the individual and team titles, with the latter being determined by the four best aggregate scores of the team’s players. In 1979-89, it became the best five scores from a team’s six players, determined daily, which lasted until 1990 when it was switched to daily 5-count-4 to match the NCAA championship. Finally, in 2010 it was restored to the 6-count-5 daily format used in the Pac-10/12 championship and continued in use by the Western Intercollegiate today.
The winner’s list of the Western Intercollegiate rivals just about any other event. In the 1960s and '70s, you have San Jose State legend John Lotz winning three times, BYU’s Johnny Miller, 1969 NCAA winner Bob Clark (Cal State LA) won the Western Intercollegiate in 1970, Peter Jacobsen (Oregon), Mark Lye (San Jose State), and Mark O’Meara (Long Beach State), just to name a few.
The 1980 NCAA champion Jay Don Blake (Utah State) came back the next year and won the Western Intercollegiate before almost repeating at NCAAs. Arron Oberholser (San Jose St) famously beat out a very tough field that included Stanford freshman Tiger Woods in the 1996 edition, which was televised on ESPN. Stanford’s Joel Kribel won twice in non-consecutive years to end the 1990s. Pepperdine’s Jason Allred shot the first 63 (-7) in tournament history on the way to winning in 2000.
Starting around 2010, John Kennaday, Head Coach of hosts San Jose State Spartans, got the idea to embrace the Dr. Alister MacKenzie connection between the Western Intercollegiate and its April counterpart, the Masters.
Thus another jacketed tradition was born. From the list of Blue Letterman Jacket winners of the Western Intercollegiate (since 2010), only one — Scottie Scheffler — also won a famous green jacket, but it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see more earn theirs in the future.
At the time of the 2020 season cancellation, the Western Intercollegiate had been played 73 straight times. Outside of the NCAA championship, which was also cancelled, and the New England Intercollegiate it is the longest continuously running college golf tournament in the country. Because of the 2020 interruption, however, the title for the longest active streak goes to the Border Olympics which was played for the 74th consecutive year in February 2025.
Players and Golf Channel viewers alike were treated to a different looking Western Intercollegiate in 2024. Tournament organizers decided to flip play of the front and back nine holes to showcase the major renovation project to restore the front 9 green complexes to something more similar to Dr. MacKenzie’s original designs. Therefore the telecast ended with the final putt on the par-4 9th hole instead of the traditional par-3 18th.
Arizona sophomore Filip Jakubcik became the first Wildcat to win this event and the second player in a row to earn their first collegiate victory at Pasatiempo. On the team side, Stanford won for the first time since 2019, earning their 12th Western Intercollegiate title to tie them with host San Jose State for most all time.
This year’s crop of blue jacket hopefuls includes the usual contingent of west coast teams, seven of which rank inside the top 50 in the country. UNLV has two of the top ranked players in the field with Caden Fioroni (below) and Zach Little, both coming off major wins this Spring.
San Diego State will likely be without their top player Justin Hastings as the Latin American Amateur champion will be spending the previous week attempting to master the other MacKenzie greens. Be on the lookout for BYU who is one of the best in the nation in both par 4 and par 5 scoring and has already announced themselves, winning the Big 12 Match Play tournament this Fall.
Teams will be looking to join 2012 Texas, 2019 Stanford, 2021 Pepperdine, and 2022 Texas as Pasa-survivors in the last two decades to bring both the Western Intercollegiate and NCAA team championship trophies back to campus.
Follow live scoring on ScoreboardLive
For more, see westernintercollegiate.golf