Ringler: Making the case for Ryder Cup-style events between college golf rivals

In the summer of 2007, a meeting took place at the U.S. Junior Championship at Boone Valley Golf Club in Augusta, Missouri. Coaches gathered that week to discuss how could they grow the sport

The NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship was about to switch its format to match play to decide the national champion. One reason for this was to help the sport gain more attention and become more popular.

A coach even mentioned the growth in popularity in college softball and baseball and talked about how he would often see those scores run across the bottom of his TV screen on the ESPN ticker. Coaches wanted to see college golf get that same sort of attention.

Match play could easily allow someone to understand Team A vs. Team B and a winner and a loser. The NCAA finals would soon change and for a few days at the end of the season, college golfers would have the chance to be noticed on a bigger scale.

The format change was made for the 2009 men’s championship and a better script could not have been written when the event was held at the Inverness Club in Toledo. The drama was there, the intensity was there, the atmosphere trumped the stroke-play format and it all came to a head when Texas A&M’s Bronson Burgoon stuffed a wedge to tap-in range on the final hole of the championship match to give the Aggies the title.

That week certainly proved match play could make the sport more popular. It also proved that match play drew the teams closer together competitively, but that’s another story.

These days, we often see fans and school administration fly in for the final matches of the NCAA finals. The head-to-head format easily caught the eyes of anyone looking in that direction and even some who may not have been.

Mission accomplished. Soon television would join the party and now the sport is able to be seen from coast-to-coast, certainly raising the popularity of college golf. However, that can only take it so far. Many teams, in fact most teams, never make it far enough to have a chance at national television coverage. These college golf programs need a boost, but they need it locally. College softball and baseball teams get that with many games per year at home against conference opponents and rivals.

Now it’s time for another spike for college golf, and the Ryder Cup provides the perfect formula. The biennial event featuring the best players from the United States against those from Europe captures the attention of the entire golf community as well as those who don’t watch week-to-week.

Imagine what that could do with the fan bases and communities of college golf programs, even the ones that do garner eyeballs in late May each year.

You know what would be good for college golf on a local level?

If the sport could get two exempt days to play Ryder Cup format against its rival.

— Lance Ringler (@GolfweekRingler) October 1, 2021

Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State at Oak Tree Country Club in Edmond, Oklahoma, in a two-day Ryder Cup format? You could sell tickets to that match. How about North Carolina and Duke, Indiana vs. Purdue, Kentucky vs. Louisville, Boise State vs. Idaho, Iowa State vs. Iowa and Lafayette vs. Lehigh? The list could go on and on, but you get the point.

Sure, some schools have already been doing something similar (the Copper Cup, for example, which pits Arizona against Arizona State, or the Star Match between Army and Navy). There are others, but they’re often just one-day events because they have to count toward a team’s allotted competitive playing dates.

This type of an event would bring the school’s direct fan base together and shine a light directly on the golf program for one weekend – more so than probably any other event on a team’s schedule does. The chance to connect with fans, make new fans and even sell tickets to a golf event is real with an event like this. Sure, most schools host a home event, but it’s the 15-plus teams in a stroke-play format that can sometimes be hard for followers to connect to.

So much has already been done to grow college golf on a big scale and now it’s time for something new – something that would grow the sport on the local level within the school’s already die-hard fanbase. All that is needed is two days of competition to be exempt from the 24 days golf teams are allowed each year.

We have seen much change in the world of college golf. It’s time once again to get outside the box and bring more change. This type of event would be something that would be talked about and looked forward to each year or every other year.