By Mark Slack
From the desk of Senior Head Recruiting Coach Amanda Rawson
Golf is a game of numbers both on and off the course. Student-athletes throughout the country work diligently to find competitive advantages. Young men and women spend countless hours at the course and in the classroom to find that separation. Let’s take a closer look at the numbers.
On the men’s side, there are 1,163 colleges and universities that maintain golf programs. Division I contains 287 programs, D II 214, D III 279, NAIA 165, and there are 218 junior college programs (www.ncaa.org). Close to 160,000 high school athletes are competing for 8,250 college roster spots (www.ncaa.org). Simply put, the supply of golfers outweighs the demand for opportunities. On average, each Division I program only has 4.5 scholarship offers available per year. Therefore, there are 160,000 high school golfers competing for 1,291 Division I scholarships.
A total of 733 institutions offer golf for women. Division I has 231 programs, D II 131, D III 158, NAIA 125, and there are 88 junior college programs (www.ncaa.org). There are over 66,000 women’s high school participants battling for 3,981 college roster positions (www.ncaa.org). The average D II program offers 5.4 scholarships per year. All women’s participants are competing for 704 D II scholarship opportunities. The limited amount of opportunity is the driving force in competition for both men and women.
The main thing golfers can do to separate themselves is focus on their work ethic both on and off the course. For men, the average student-athlete competing at the D I level has an 18 hole scoring average of 72.5 and a 3.37 GPA. Division I women golfers have an 18 hole average of 83.7 while on average carrying 3.42 GPA. Successful student-athletes on both fronts are competing in AJGA, FCWT, USGA and state and local tournaments.
