How Texas golf is the host of the NCAA championships on a course 1,300 miles away | Bohls

Thanks to a brand-new venture that's the brainchild of Texas men’s golf coach John Fields, the Longhorns are hosting this week’s NCAA championship in that sport starting Friday.

Just not in Austin.

In fact, nowhere near Austin.

The tournament, featuring the top 30 golf teams in the country, including Fields’ Longhorns, will be at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., a few long Bryson DeChambeau drives away from San Diego. Yeah, Texas is hosting, just some 1,300 miles away.

Welcome to new-age hosting in the 21st century.

The genesis of the idea came about five years ago when no California schools, not even in the San Diego area, stepped forward with bids to host the event moving forward. So Fields enlisted the support of former Oklahoma State athletic director and legendary golf coach Mike Holder and suggested to longtime Longhorns megadonor Bob Rowling that “it would be a good idea to host the national championship in Southern California.”

And Rowling, the billionaire sole owner of 47 Omni hotels who once gave $25 million to the Texas business school, said why not? Then Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte gave his blessing as well. And so did the NCAA, which approved it, and the plan was off and running.

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“The schools in the area didn’t want to do it,” Del Conte said. “I can’t give the Rowling family enough kudos. They spent a significant amount of money. But the vision came from Fields.”

Coaching legend: 'This will transform college golf'

Holder, who won eight national championships with the Cowboys, has lent a helping hand to the organization of this and gushes about the future.

“This will transform college golf,” Holder said. “It’s going to take it from a very, very significant amateur event to the premier amateur event in all of athletics. In fact, I think it has a chance to become the amateur version of the Masters. There are so many things that make the Masters what it is, but one of the biggest is that they play it at the same place every year. I think it’s inevitable it will be a permanent site.”

And a challenging site at that.

Thanks to a huge $20 million renovation by famed architect Gil Hanse and partner Jim Wagner as well as a $5.5 million redo of the practice facility, short-game area and driving range, the course will serve as home for NCAA men’s and women’s golf.

Maybe forever. Kind of like golf’s version of the College World Series.

That’s where Fields, in his 27th season as Texas coach, came up with the notion of piggybacking on the birth of the College World Series, which has kept that crown jewel of baseball in Omaha, Neb., since 1950. While it’s been a vast undertaking, Fields thinks it has been well worth it as he and others hope to re-create baseball’s successful trajectory for the growing sport that is college golf.

Like volleyball and softball, college golf is exploding. Take the just-completed PGA Championships at Valhalla. The top five finishers, including San Diego State product Xander Schauffele, who beat SMU’s DeChambeau on the 72nd hole to win his first major, all played college golf. So did 15 of the top 22 on the final leaderboard.

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And Fields saw this as a chance to give back and make college golf even more high-profile.

Thus was born the College World Golf Championships Foundation Inc. It’s a mouthful of a title.

Transforming a course, down to blades of grass

Fields pushed for the new nonprofit entity with his daughter, April Workman, as the executive director and Fields on the board of directors, but that doesn’t mean he’s close to giving up his position of coaching the Longhorns, who are gunning for their fifth national title and Fields’ third. That said, he’s made about 16 trips to Carlsbad to oversee the progress.

The NCAA awarded La Costa the site even when there wasn’t really a golf course considering the vast makeover. Hanse’s team completely stripped the layout that had been in place since 1965. Club director Dustin Irwin said they moved fairways; added six tee boxes per hole to benefit the collegians, 3,000 members and hotel guests alike; sprigged nine holes and resodded the rest with bentgrass; and pretty much rebuilt a flexible tract that can play 6,300 yards for the women and a shade under 7,500 for the men.

“He changed everything,” Holder said. “Every blade of grass, every bunker, every green.”

Before they ripped it up, though, chief of sales Dan Surette said Hanse brought in a sampling of men’s and women’s golf coaches to walk the course and ask them for suggestions. This week, Surette got ringing endorsements from women’s coaches about the quality of the course and the strategic nature it demands.

“Omni wants this to be the best amateur event in the world,” Surette said. “It was a big commitment.”

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The advantages of playing at a neutral site

And college golf gained an anchor with a new site for 2024 through 2026. Perhaps even a permanent one?

“Oh, that’s absolutely the plan,” Fields said. “We’ve also bid for it in 2027 and 2028. We just need to hit a home run the first year.”

All parties signed off on the premise for a number of reasons. Those include the likelihood of perfect weather, a conducive Pacific Coast time zone to allow the Golf Channel to air the competition up to six hours a day and in prime time back east, and an all-inclusive resort that could house every single coach, golfer, television employee and administrative staffer involved in the event, with 600 completely remodeled rooms on site.

But the playing field needed to be even for all.

“I think there’s been a need for a neutral site, but anyone who wants to host it had a vested interest,” Holder said. “I think it’s inevitable it will be a permanent site.”

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That as much as any factor was a driving force for this idea so a school wouldn’t have an extra advantage as when it was hosted the previous three years at Grayhawk Golf Club, Arizona State's home course. Even though they’d played their course 81 times, the Sun Devils were vanquished by none other than Fields’ Longhorns for the 2022 national championship.

That said, it was a huge recruiting benefit for ASU to host the event for three years, and Fields said it played a huge role in the Sun Devils landing future PGA Tour golfer Preston Summerhays even though Texas was trying hard to lure him. Yeah, the school that has spawned six legendary golfers who have won 102 PGA tournaments and 10 majors championships. But Texas still whipped ASU, including Summerhays, who was a freshman on that 2022 club.

Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth, who have five majors between them, including three Masters, are big selling points for UT golf. But the Longhorns couldn’t overcome ASU’s perks of hosting the national championship for three straight years.

“I think I came within a whisker of getting him,” Fields said of Summerhays, “but the deciding factor was that he was going to get to play the national championship a couple of times on his own golf course.”

And other coaches across the country wanted to avoid that type of overwhelming recruiting advantage. Fields estimates the back-to-back women’s and men’s championships over consecutive weeks cost somewhere between $2 million and $3 million a year.

“Loved the place, and the people there did a good job,” Fields said of Grayhawk. “But it’s 110 degrees. Truth be known, you could cook an egg on those cart paths.”

Nor was it a fan-friendly location for galleries.

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Taking a needed leap of faith

Fields is more than a little familiar with hosting this national event because he was head coach at New Mexico when that school was home for the championships in 1992. It later won a bid to host again in 1998, but he had left for Texas the year before.

When he reached out to Holder with this grand scheme, he, too, quickly hopped on board. Holder salutes Fields and Del Conte for their vision.

“CDC is a big thinker. He’s trying to elevate everything about athletics there and in the process the game as a whole,” Holder said. “Thank goodness John and Chris looked at it more globally. For John to put in his time, effort and energy shows a real unselfishness on his part with no benefit to UT or his golf program other than the intangible things. And he’s got a really good team. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they won this thing.”

The vision required a leap of faith for Rowling and Omni as well since it will be some time before they recoup their investment.

“Texas prides itself on being a leader in the space of college athletics,” Del Conte said. “And we had two historically great coaches. It’s a win-win.”

The project is near and dear to Fields’ heart because he and wife Pearl are committed to strengthening the game of golf and leaving behind a legacy for the sport beyond shiny trophies.

“There’s no question this is a monumental job,” he said. “I’m probably one of the few people in America who would even entertain something like that. But I believe in my life and Pearl’s that golf has been so wonderful to us, that this is the right time.”

But with all that’s on his plate, does this suggest a retirement from the Longhorns soon?

“No, no. Not right now,” Fields said.

Still things to do, golfers to recruit, details to manage, championships to win. And a very big tournament to host.

NCAA golf championship

Friday-Wednesday, Carlsbad, Calif., Golf Channel, 5-9 p.m. Monday-Wednesday

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas coach's vision for college golf is new home, bright future