College golf blog: On the road to the NCAA finals

The Road to Grayhawk is a Golfweek blog that contains all current college golf news throughout the regular NCAA season.

The road all college golf teams hope to travel down this spring ends at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, site of the NCAA Women’s Championship (May 21-26) and NCAA Men’s Championship (May 28-June 2).

After the NCAA canceled all spring sports on March 13 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many teams went as long as 10.5 months without teeing it up as a group. The first tournaments kicked off across the country in January and the Road to Grayhawk resumes. Interested in all things college golf in 2021? Be sure to check this page for the latest updates in the game.

Rankings
The Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings can be found at these links:

Men’s team | Men’s individual | Women’s team | Women’s individual

Scores
Keep tabs on the spring season: Men | Women

Ringler: Five things we learned in college golf’s opening week

Jan. 29

The buzz is back, right? Sure, teams were playing college golf last fall, but it did not feel like it was really happening. Now, most of the country has a plan to play golf this spring and here we go.

What did I learn this past week?

San Diego State may be really good. The Aztecs were a top-30 team a year ago and head coach Ryan Donovan’s squad was positioned to try and snap a three-year slide of missing the NCAA Championship. The pandemic ended the season and the Aztecs’ chance to return to the finals. Now, with a season-opening victory at the Southwestern Invitational, where the Aztecs chased down one of the top teams in the country in Arizona State, we may be seeing a team that has kept the momentum and can be a factor later this spring and return to the finals for the first time since 2016.

 

Once again, Liberty is a top mid-major in college golf. The Flames lost on the second playoff hole to Florida at the Timuquana Collegiate, finishing ahead of several Power 5 teams including Virginia, Oklahoma State, Florida State and Notre Dame. When the season was stopped last year, the Flames were No. 30 in the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings.

David Puig is now near the top of the Player of the Year watch list. The Arizona State sophomore from La Garriga, Spain, won the individual title by nine shots at the Southwestern Invitational with rounds of 70-66-70 for a 10-under total. It was Puig’s first collegiate victory in only his fifth start.

Keep an eye on Arizona. After a very close loss in the Copper Cup, a match play duel vs. state rival Arizona State, the Wildcats hung on to win their own Arizona Intercollegiate earlier this week, taking a 10-shot lead into the final round and coming away with a six-shot victory over Wake Forest. Winning this event is nothing new for the Wildcats. They have won the last four Arizona Intercollegiate titles, but signs of the Wildcats’ return to the upper tiers of the sport have been there in recent years. Individually, Arizona senior Brad Reeves claimed his first collegiate title.

The stories this spring are going to be good. A player who spent the fall selling cigars came back to college golf to help his team win the Any Given Tuesday Intercollegiate.

-Lance Ringler

Who are these guys?

Jan. 29

There’s a new venture in college golf, and it’s lightening the mood. After all of college golf was canceled last March because of the pandemic, Charleston Southern head coach Jason Payne and High Point head coach Brady Gregor launched the Any Given Tuesday platform. Payne and Gregor run pretty hilarious social-media accounts under that name, with plenty of college golf-themed inside jokes, and also have a podcast. This past week, they hosted the first Any Given Tuesday Intercollegiate.

Read more about their story here.

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