I've got a little surprise ... I'm proud to present this morning the first Campus Insider Podcast. My intention is to regularly at Podcasts to the blog this spring.

In this debut episode, I interview Arizona State women's coach Melissa Luellen as she leads the Sun Devils, the top ranked team in the Golf World/NGCA women's coaches poll, into their first spring event: the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge at Palos Verdes CC in Palos Verdes, Calif.

ASU won twice in the fall, the Topy Cup and the Stanford Invitational, while finishing T-4 at the rain-shortened Mason Rudolph Intercollegiate and fourth at the NCAA Preview (when Juliana Murcia sat out the final two rounds).

The Sun Devils' lineup for their spring opener is:
Carlota Ciganda, Soph.
Jennifer Johnson, Fr.
Juliana Murcia, Sr.
Giulia Molinaro, Soph.
Jaclyn Sweeney, Jr.

THE FAB FIVE
My look at the top five school in the country right now

MEN
1. Oklahoma State (Last fall: 2)
The Cowboys have to be happy to get out of Oklahoma and away from incredible miserable winter weather (ice, wind, etc.) that seems to hit each January. You can do a lot worse than starting the spring in Hawaii.
Spring opener: Mauni Lani Invitational, Mauni Lani CC, Hilo, Hawaii, Feb. 3-5

2. Stanford (1)
Jordan Cox grabs the fifth spot, over a healthy Joseph Bramlett, for trip to Hawaii. Still, Bramlett's return makes an already deep team that much deeper.
Spring opener: Mauni Lani Invitational, Mauni Lani CC, Hilo, Hawaii, Feb. 3-5

3. Washington (4)
A lot was expected last fall and while the Huskies performed well, they didn't seem satisfied. No time like the present to show the rest of the college golf world what you've got.
Spring opener: Mauni Lani Invitational, Mauni Lani CC, Hilo, Hawaii, Feb. 3-5

4. Arizona State (3)
The Sun Devils got of to a quick start in the fall, so should we expect the same in the spring? They've had to stew for a while now on the 12th-place showing at Isleworth to close the fall
Spring opener: Mauni Lani Invitational, Mauni Lani CC, Hilo, Hawaii, Feb. 3-5

5. Florida State (NR)
The Seminoles showed lots of promise last fall when they posted a .804 winning percentage (44-10-2 head-to-head record) with a pair of wins. At the same time, they had only a .647 mark versus top-25 teams (11-6). With the stacked field they'll face in Hawaii, we'll see right quickly what FSU is made of.
Spring opener: Mauni Lani Invitational, Mauni Lani CC, Hilo, Hawaii, Feb. 3-5 



WOMEN
1. Arizona State (1)
A victory last year at Palos Verdes helped kick-start the Sun Devils' spring march to the NCAA Championship title. ASU has the player to repeat on both fronts.
Spring opener: Northrup Grumman Regional Challenge, Palos Verdes GC, Palos Verdes, Calif., Feb. 9-11

2. UCLA (2)
Four runner-up finishes for the Bruins in the fall leaves them upbeat, but wanting more. Meanwhile, I have a hunch Sydnee Michaels is going to play well this spring as she closes out her senior season.
Spring opener: Northrup Grumman Regional Challenge, Palos Verdes GC, Palos Verdes, Calif., Feb. 9-11

3. USC (5)
Can Jennifer Song go undefeated in the 2009-10 season? It's asking a bit much, but it could be a lot of fun to watch if she comes out and wins at Palos Verdes. And that, at least, is not a long shot.
Spring opener: Northrup Grumman Regional Challenge, Palos Verdes GC, Palos Verdes, Calif., Feb. 9-11

4. Auburn (3)
You can make the argument that Cydney Clanton and Candace Schepperle are the best one-two combo in women's golf without embarrassing yourself. If they get some help at the end of the lineup, watch out.
Spring opener: Arizona Wildcat Invitational, Arizona National GC, Tucson, Ariz., Feb. 22-23

5. Purdue (4)
The United Nations has nothing on the Boilermaker roster, with six different countries (Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, South Africa and Thailand) represented in West Lafayette.
Spring opener: Lady Puerto Rico Classic, Coco Beach Resort, Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, Feb. 7-9



STAT OF THE WEEK
110
Number of days between the last round the California men's team played last fall (Oct. 13, The MacKenzie) and the first round the Golden Bears played this spring (Feb. 1, Arizona Invitational). The winter break was actually four days longer than the time off that coach Steve Desimone's team had last summer between the end of the 2008-09 season and the start of the 2009-10 campaign. Of course it didn't hurt the team, as Cal won dramatically by one stroke over Arizona Tuesday after entering the day with a seven-stroke lead and falling 11 strokes back in the middle of the final round.


WHAT TO WATCH FOR
* Interim coach Robbie Bosco makes his debut when the BYU women start their spring schedule next week at The Gold Rush event. Bosco takes over for Sue Nyhus, who stepped down after the end of the fall semester, and if the name is familiar, chances are you're also a college golf fan. Bosco was the starting quarterback at BYU when the team won the national championship in 1984. He started 33 games for the Cougars and threw for 66 touchdowns, 10 more than another notable BYU QB, Steve Young.

* It won't necessarily have an impact on Johnson & Wales NAIA squads is unknown, but the Florida school recently announced a strategic alliance with the Jim McLean Golf School in Miami. The arrangement allows golf management students to study under McLean's teaching pros. Staring last fall, Johnson & Wales students could earn a bachlor's degree in golf management through the university's hospitality college.



TOURNAMENT PREVIEW
MEN
Mauni Lani Invitational
   (For live scoring, click here to link to Golfstat)
Mauna Lani North Course, Kohala Coast, Hawaii
Feb. 3-5
Host: Hawaii-Hilo
Defending champion: USC (13-under 851) by 11 strokes over Washington; Washington's Nick Taylor (six-under 210) by one stroke over USC's Jamie Lovemark
Field: Arizona State, CSU-East Bay, Colorado, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Oregon, Oregon State, Rhode Island, San Jose State, San Francisco, Sonoma State, TCU, Texas, Texas Tech, UC Davis, UCLA, USC, Washington
Skinny: Not a bad way to start the spring season, what with six of the top seven in the final Golf World/Nike Golf coaches' poll competing head-to-head in Hawaii, and 12 of the top 20. Forecast is supposed to be for mild conditions, which could mean a lot of red numbers.

JU Invitational
   (For live scoring, click here to link to Golfstat)
TPC Sawgrass (Players Stadium Course), Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
Feb. 7-9
Host: Jacksonville
Defending champion: Lamar (25-over 889) by one stroke over Kentucky; Stetson's Thomas Parker (four-under 212) by five strokes over Kentucky's Andy Winings
Field: Charleston Southern, Clemson, East Carolina, East Tennessee State, Georgia State, Idaho, Jacksonville, Jacksonville State, Kentucky, Liberty, Murray State, Old Dominion, USC Upstate, Wake Forest, Winthrop
Skinny: Three words--Players Stadium Course. It will be interesting to see how the collegians handle Pete Dye's sinister layout after playing the Valley Course a year ago.

The Farms Collegiate Invitational
The Farms GC, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.
Feb. 8-9
Host: San Diego
Defending champion: New Event
Field: CSU Bakersfield, CSU Northridge, Denver, Loyola Marymount, San Diego, San Diego State, Santa Clara, SMU, St. Mary's (Calif.), UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UTEP
Skinny: The course played host to the Callaway Match Play event run by the GCAA a year ago.


WOMEN
Lady Puerto Rico Classic
Coco Beach GC, Rio Grande, Puerto Rico
Feb. 7-9
Host: Purdue
Defending champion: Purdue (24-over 888) by 21 strokes over Tennessee; Indiana's Laura Nochta and Purdue's Maria Hernandez (three-over 219)
Field: Alabama, Baylor, Florida State, Georgia, Kent State, Indiana, Iowa State, Michigan, Northwestern, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Penn State, Purdue, SMU, Wisconsin, Texas Tech
Skinny: Given the odd weather in the southeast the past month, the potential advantage for the "warm" climate schools over their Northern counterparts would seem to be negligible.

The Gold Rush
   (For live scoring, click here to link to Golfstat)
Old Ranch CC, Seal Beach, Calif. (par 71, 6,157 yards)
Feb. 8-9
Host: Long Beach State
Defending champion: New event
Field: BYU, Cal Poly, California Baptist, CSU Fullerton, CSU Northridge, Long Beach State, New Mexico State, Portland State, San Diego State, San Francisco, UC Davis, UC Riverside
Skinny: Inaugural event has 11 teams from five different conferences competing.

Northrup Grumman Regional Challenge
   (For live scoring, click here to link to Golfstat)
Palos Verdes GC, Palos Verdes, Calif.
Feb. 8-10
Host: Ohio State
Defending champion: Arizona State (46-over 898) by 18 strokes over USC; Arizona State's Juliana Murcia (one-over 214) by eight strokes over ASU's Carlota Ciganda and USC's Jennifer Song
Field: Arizona State, California, Colorado, Denver, Duke, Florida, Louisville, Michigan State, Ohio State, Pepperdine, TCU, UC Irvine, UCLA, USC, Wake Forest
Skinny: The course traditionally is one of the toughest the women's teams will face all season. If ASU can repeat, the Sun Devils will be just the second school to win in back to back years (joining Arizona in 2000 & 2001) and also the second school to win the NGR title three times in the event's 14-year history (joining Pepperdine).

As if being a MBA student at Elon University in North Carolina, planning for his July wedding and preparing for his last semester as a member of the Phoenix men's golf team didn't occupy enough of his time, Jayson Judy has taken on a new diversion: fundraiser.

The Gibsonville, N.C., native (right) has spent the past few weeks developing "Eagles for Haiti," a campaign where sponsors pledge money for every eagle made by any men's golf team in the Southern Conference during the spring semester. Proceeds will be given to the American Red Cross to benefit its efforts in helping the country following the earthquake that hit the island Jan. 12.

"When the earthquake first happened, I came up with an idea to do a can drive at our school ... but talking our local Red Cross guy he said raising money would be the best way to help," Judy said. "I thought about the Eagles for St. Jude project the PGA Tour does  ... so Eagles for Haiti was brought on by that."

After getting the go-ahead from officials with the conference, Judy contacted the coaches at the other schools and quickly gained their support.

The 11 conference schools that have men's teams (Appalachian State, Chattanooga, College of Charleston, Davidson, Elon, Furman, Georgia Southern, Samford, UNC Greensboro, Western Carolina, Wofford) have made between 55 and 110 eagles during the spring season in recent years. His modest goal of getting $100 in pledges for every eagle (he current is up to $63) would allow the effort to raise more than $10,000 when the conference championship rolls around in April. "Hopefully we'll even exceed that $100 goal," he said.

Judy said he has been encouraged by the support he's received so far, particularly when Elon president Leo Lambert chipped in with a pledge.

The fundraiser has a website--www.eaglesforhaiti.org--where donations can be made. (You can also e-mail helpnow@eagles for haiti.org). The site will also monitor the play of the Southern Conference schools, tracking the eagles made during the spring.

I read with interest an article in the NCAA News last week about ice hockey and the issues coaches in their sport are having in terms of getting recruits, specifically Canadian players, to consider the U.S. college system versus playing in Canadian junior leagues. The perception of some is that the junior leagues provide a quicker, smoother route to the NHL than go to American colleges. The junior leagues are for-profit businesses that have financial stakes in getting young skaters to play for them, and have even begun to reach into the U.S. to try and lure top juniors to come north of the border.

Needless to say, their success in attracting players has a direct impact on college programs. To help fight this, the commissioners of the various Division I ice hockey conferences have created College Hockey, Inc., a consortium that will  promote the benefits of accepting scholarships and playing college hockey. CHI won't represent a single school but the overall interests of college hockey and try to educate young players about the fact that college hockey develops them for the NHL just as effectively plus provides opportunities for those who might not have the skills to play the game at the highest level professionally.

"This is overdue," said Paul Kelly, a former NHL players association executive director who will oversee College Hockey Inc. "The colleges desperately need help. They are losing this battle. I won't let that happen."

OK, so what does this have to do with college golf?

I see some parallels between the two sports, and I think college hockey might be on to something that the folks who have a vested interest in college golf might want to consider.

As with Canadian junior leagues to college hockey, the lure of turning pro and taking your lumps on developmental/mini-tours to get your game into shape for the PGA/LPGA/European Tour is the single biggest threat to the continued development of college golf. Who needs to attend school, and have the distractions of studying at a university, if I can compete on a mini-tour, make some money (however small) and learn what it's like to play for pay?

I don't have any hard and fast data to back me up, but it feels as if "turning pro" is becoming a more attractive option of late for junior golfers, particularly for "elite" players in the women's game. Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel, Michelle Wie, Brittany Lincicome, Esther Choe and Vicky Hurst have all bypassed college entirely in the last five to 10 years. Mina Harigae, Jane Rah and most recently Sue Kim have all in the last two years tried college for a semester and decided it was time to move on.

I'm personally a believer attending college and playing college golf is an incredibly valuable experience. Elite players can indeed sharpen their games with top-notch competition (see Rickie Fowler), and diamonds-in-the-rough can be polished in a relatively low-pressure setting (room and board, books and food all paid for; no need to book your own hotels or plane tickets). However, I also believe there is a large contingent of people who think college golf is at best a risky proposition and at worst a waste of time.

Would it be in the best interests of the Golf Coaches Association of America and the National Golf Coaches Association then to consider creating a consortium similar to College Hockey Inc., to promote the benefits of college golf and dispel myths that continue to hurt the public perception of the game? I'm asking as much as I am suggesting. There might be down sides to this (aside from cost) that I'm not thinking of right now. And yet, the upsides seem great.

It says something about the quality of women's amateur golf that the seven players who were given sponsor's invitations to compete at the LPGA Tour's Kraft Nabisco Championship in March all have previously played in a women's major championship (see chart below).

U.S. Women's Amateur and Women's Amateur Public Links winner Jennifer Song headlines the list of amateur golfers who'll tee it up at Mission Hills CC in Rancho Mirage, Calif. The USC sophomore recently said she intends to turn professional this summer, the same circumstance that college standouts Stacy Lewis and Amanda Blumenherst found themselves in 2008 and 2009, respectively, when they were invited to play in the tournament. Both Lewis and Blumenherst declined their invitations to the Kraft Nabisco, stating that they wanted to keep all their available sponsor's exemptions for when they were professionals in hopes they would win enough money in those events to earn LPGA Tour cards without having to go to Q school.

Asked if he was concerned Song might do the same this time, Kraft Nabisco tournament director Terry Wilcox said that he had sent Song her invitation yesterday and has already received her confirmation. "She evidently is intending, at this time, to play," Wilcox said. "She sounded very anxious to play, so I'm assuming she's going to do it. … Maybe she'll become aware of [what Lewis and Blumenherst did] between now and March and withdraw. I don't know. But as of now she's accepted the invitation."

Song is one of five college players who will compete in the tournament. The others are Auburn senior Candace Schepperle and junior Cydney Clanton, Arizona State freshman Jennifer Johnson and Denver freshman Kimberly Kim.

Two prominent junior golfers—Alexis Thompson and Jessica Korda—round of the list of invitees. Both are likely to be selected in the coming weeks for the 2010 U.S. Curtis Cup team. Korda this past weekend won the South Atlantic Amateur in record fashion, breaking the 85-year-old's mark for best 18-hole score (62) and 72-hole total (13-under 275, eight strokes better than the previous record).

In this week's issue of Golf World, my story in the Amateur Spotlight section focuses on Stanford senior Joseph Bramlett, who is back practicing with the Cardinal and hoping to crack the starting lineup this spring as he finishes up a injury-hampered career. Last month, doctors agreed his right wrist was strong enough to allow the 21-year-old from Saratoga, Calif., to play 18 holes again. He's trying to qualify for the one open spot in the Stanford lineup when the team plays in Hawaii early next month.

Quick set-up: After playing 13 tournaments his freshman year (2006-07), posting a 71.5 average, earning second-team All-American honors and helping Stanford claim its first NCAA title in 14 years, Bramlett has played in just nine college events in the past 31 months, hampered by two separate freak injuries to the wrist.

Suffice it to say, in my phone interview with Bramlett last week, you could tell he is pretty pumped about getting get back to a regular practice routine with the rest of his teammates. "It’s been exciting … to get a little bit of that trash talking again once you get back on the course, and then backing it up," he joked.

Certainly Bramlett confesses there were a few "why me" moments during the past few years as he had set backs after a lot of hard work rehabbing the injury. Amazingly, though, this is a young man who has handled the situation with great maturity.

“His biggest asset, whether he had the wrist injury or not, is his mental [toughness],” Stanford coach Conrad Ray says. “And that really had to hold some weight over the last couple years because he’s run the gamut of emotions. All the things that run through your mind if you’re a premier athlete being pulled away from your sport, he’s had to deal with. And he’s handled it a lot of character.”

Aside from just being happy for Bramlett, his potential return could have a huge impact on the race for the national championship this spring. The Cardinal ranks second in the Golf World/Nike Golf coaches' poll behind top-ranked Oklahoma State entering the spring despite never really getting any consistent scoring from fifth starter in their lineup. If Bramlett could fill that role, even if he is not immediately back to his All-American form, you've got to think Stanford could give OSU a run at No. 1.

“He’s got some good teammates around him,” says Ray, what with Sihwan Kim, Steve Ziegler and David Chung each having averages of 73 or better during the fall. “That’s going to relieve some of the pressure. It would be different if he was our only horse.”

The other thing that works for Bramlett is the fact that while being out of action, he could focus more on his studies ... so much so that he's going to be done with the school work toward his communications degree in March, giving him the rest of time to focus on golf as the post-season begins.

The NCAA Convention begins today in Atlanta and runs through Saturday. Unlike the last few years, the line-up of proposed legislation that would have have a direct impact on golf, at least at the Division I level, is minimal. (Division II, on the other hand, has a couple to follow, including a reduction is days of competition from 24 to 21 as well as its Life in the Balance legislation.)

That said, college golf fans might want to keep an eye on a proposal involving men's basketball that could have applications to golf down the road. Proposal 2009-100 would prohibit schools from sponsoring or hosting games or other events involving high school and club teams on campus or at regularly used off-campus facilities. The thought is that by hosting such events, the schools would have an edge with potential recruits who get to see the university and its facilities.

Should this pass, could a similar proposal happen that might apply to golf? Most notably, Oklahoma State's Karsten Creek GC hosts the Ping Invitational each fall, one of the AJGA's higher profile tournaments. Furman, Texas A&M and Texas Tech host other AJGA tournaments while the campus courses at Penn State and Duke hold IJGT tournaments. Does these programs gain an advantage in recruiting because of this? Some say yes, some say no. 

Since posting my All-Decade team here just before New Year's, I've heard from some readers regarding my choices. Surprisingly (or should I say thankfully) most thought my picks were decent. To those people, well, thanks for your support.

There was a group, however, that had some bones to pick, some even offering decent alternatives. Just a word for everybody going forward: the easiest way to pique my interest and get yourself mentioned in the blog, aside of course from bribery (just kidding!) is to actually come with some cold hard facts to sell your point. I know, I know, seems obvious, doesn't it? Yet you'd be surprised at what I get.

To show you I don't mind being second guessed, here are a few of the players I have been pitched to help "upgrade" my original selections. I'll let you be the judge on whether to vote people on or off the All-Decade Island.

The bulk of the debate centered on the men's squad. The three players that gained the most support were Kyle Stanley, Clemson; Jamie Lovemark, USC; and Alejandro Canizares, Arizona State

To compare apples to apples, here are their stats:

Kyle Stanley, Clemson, 2006-09
  2x first-team AA, 71.63 avg., 07 ACC POY, 2x NCAA runner-up

Jamie Lovemark, USC, 2006-09
   2x first-team AA, 71.51 avg., 07 NCAA medalist/POY, 4 wins

Alejandro Canizares, Arizona State, 2003-06
   2x first-team AA (2x 3rd-team), 71.46 avg., 03 NCAA medalist, 2x Pac-10 POY, 6 wins

Lets start by saying that all were top-notch players. My comment on Stanley is that as solid a career as he had, he only won twice, causing him to slip just a notch below the rest. Lovemark had an amazing freshman season, but seemed to struggle to live up to all that acclaim he good as a rookie. By the end of his junior season, he was battling an injury and his sudden departure after a season with a 73.41 average to turn pro caused him to miss the final cut.

The most intriguing argument for me is the one that's made for Canizares. In the interest of full disclosure (or to cover myself) he was the final player I cut to get down to my original list of 12.

A reader from Tempe wrote to me in defense of Canizares:

"I know you have to kick people out, so I will do it. He had as many first-team AA as Dustin Johnson and Alejandro was a four-time overall pick. He had a better stroke average (71.46 to 72.11) and was a two-time Pac-10 Player of the Year.

Also, how many freshmen won the NCAA title in the decade? I think only two (Oklahoma State's Jonathan Moore and Alejandro)

Alejandro had a better stroke average and more wins than Brock Mackenzie and a better stroke average and more wins than Troy Matteson. Below, using your format, is the comparison.

Alejandro Canizares, Arizona State, 2002-05
    2x 1st-team AA, 71.46 avg., 6 wins, two-time Pac-10 POY
Dustin Johnson, Coastal Carolina, 2003-07
    2x 1st-team AA (1x 3rd-team), 3x Big South POY, 72.11 avg.
Brock Mackenzie, Washington, 2000-04
    2x 1st-team AA (1x 2nd-team & HM), 71.65 avg., 4 wins
Troy Matteson, Georgia Tech, 1998-2003
    2x 1st-team AA (1x 3rd-team), 02 NCAA medalist, 71.91 avg., 5 wins

    
Suffice it to say, Canizares' fans have a fairly good argument.



On the women's side, the two names I heard of for further considerations were a pair of teammates at USC: Mikaela Parmlid and Dewi-Clarie Schreefel.

Again to compare apples and apples:

Mikaela Parmlid, USC, 1999-2003
  2x first-team AA, 73.99 avg., 03 NCAA medalist, 5 wins
Dewi-Claire Schreefel, USC, 2004-08
  1x first-team AA (2x 2nd-team), 74.34 avg., 06 NCAA medalist, 3 wins

For as good a player as both Parmlid and Schreefel were, neither holds the USC record for best scoring average (Candie Kung has that distinction) or the low single-season average (Irene Cho). Both are high quality players, but come up just shy of the threshold set by the other 12 on the All-Decade team.


OK ... What do you all have to say now? Am I still overlooking anybody?

With the passing of legendary BYU men's coach Karl Tucker last Friday, college golf one of the pioneers of the modern-day game.

Here's a link to a press release from the school, while the Deseret News in Provo, Utah, also had a nice tribute to the 83-year-old, who died after complications from congestive heart failure.

Suffice it to say, Tucker's resume was impressive. After taking over the Cougar program in 1961, he led them to 19 Western Athletic Conference titles, 170 team championships and 117 match-play victories. His teams posted 12 top-five finishes at the NCAA Championships, and when BYU won the title in 1981, it was the first national championship for the school in any sport.

During his GCAA Hall of Fame career, Tucker coached 69 All-Americans, 14 WAC players of the year, 13 WAC individual champions. Three of his players went on to become PGA Tour Rookie of the Year— John Fought, Pat McGowan and Keith Clearwater. He also coached the World Golf Hall of Famer Johnny Miller, two-time college player of the year Bobby Clampett (in photo with Tucker), 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir and Mike Reid, a two-time major winner on the Champions Tour.

Photo courtesy of BYU

Over the past couple of years, I've come to dread the first full week of January. It's got nothing to do with the post-Christmas blahs or a gosh-I-wish-I-had-a-few-more-days-of-vacation kind of thing. What I dislike is the fact I've got to chase all the rumors that boil up in December about various college players who have decided not to return to their respect schools for the spring semester.

Seriously, I take no pleasure in calling a college coach, chit-chatting about the holidays and then having to ask him or her the tacky but unavoidable question:

So did everybody from your team make it back to campus?

The list of players who aren't returning this time around isn't too lengthy, thankfully. Among the more notable are Jane Rah at Oklahoma State and Amelia Lewis at Florida, both of whom are leaving school to focus more on their games, and Daniela Holmqvist, who is officially transferring from Tulane (where she was Conference USA freshman of the year in 2009) to California. What was different this time, though, was that I heard from some well-placed sources that there are already a handful of players who know they're going to transfer during the summer. These players have told there coaches as much, thus setting themselves up to be competing as lame ducks for the next five-plus months, doing wonders, no doubt, for their respective teams' morale.

What's going on out there? Why does it seem like more and more players are jumping around? Holmqvist is now the third player on the Cal women's roster who transferred into the program for the 2009-10 season, joining Joanne Lee (formerly at USC) and Emily Childs (formerly at Colorado). Truth is, several top-25 programs on both the men's and women's front have transfers on their rosters, more so than I can recall in a while

In talking to various coaches at the GCAA and NGCA conventions last month in Las Vegas, I got the sense that there is a growing unrest with the present situation, where the moment a player starts to feel uncomfortable at a school, he or she is off to find a new one.

This transfer dilemma is an effect with seemingly numerous causes, most centered around the accelerated recruiting schedule that has become de rigour in Division I college golf. Long story short: more and more coaches are offering scholarships to high schoolers at an earlier and earlier age while simultaneously more and more high schoolers are making verbal commitments before they've even started their senior years—and before taking an official visit to see a school. (I'll leave it up to others to decide what begat what in this chicken-or-the-egg debate.)

What seems to be happening is that players typically now go on unofficial visits, often receive offers, then get nervous that if they don't accept something pretty quickly somebody else will take their spot (and money) and that they'll be left without a chair to sit in when the recruiting music stops. Yet with schools committing to players (and vice versa) so early, it's fostering a situation where players might be making decisions without having gathered enough information. The problem truly surfaces when, once the players are finally enrolled, they come to realize that this wasn't the place they thought it would be and that they've made a mistake.

So how to you remedy the situation? Unfortunately, it's a bit like putting a genie back in a bottle. Coaches could collectively say, "We're going to hold off on offering scholarships," but if a few begin to cave on this pledge, the proverbial floodgates will open again. Without the NCAA reviewing and revising some of its recruiting rules (i.e. allowing coaches to contact players on Jan. 1 of their junior years rather than July 1 proceeding their senior year and allowing for official visits in the spring of a high schooler's junior year), the potential for bad decisions remains.

The NCAA rule I'd like to see changed/enforced, however, the one that might address some of my concerns with the least amount of politics is the one that allows student-athletes in golf to transfer to another school without having to sit out a year in residence (schools now typically waive that requirement when releasing their student athletes. Golf should require all players to have to miss a year's competition if they decide to switch schools (as is the case in basketball and football). It would certainly have a chilling effect on the number of transfers if for no other reason than it attaches a consequence for the player to his or her action. Any leverage players currently have in the ability to threaten to transfer if something doesn't change with the way they're being treated at their original school would be greatly reduced.

I'm a believer if a player wants to transfer badly enough, given his or her situation, then he or she will be willing to sit-out the year to do so (case in point: Philip Francis, who because of Pac-10 rules on transferring to another school in the conference is out of action this season after leaving UCLA for Arizona State but was willing to do so to be closer to his family and his instructor in Scottsdale).

Meanwhile, knowing that if you do transfer--especially if you transfer from one school to another between the fall and spring semesters--you're going to have to sit out a season might cause golfers to do a little more homework as they're making their original decision in high school on where to go to college.

***********

All that said, and at the risk of being labeled a hypocrite, I am more sympathetic to the decision that Rah and Lewis made to leave school as opposed to transferring. If I have a beef with them, it's that I wish they wouldn't do it in the middle of the season, when coaches can't find somebody to replace them on their schools' rosters.

"I think college is for everyone, but I don’t think college golf is for everyone," Lewis told me over the phone when I spoke with her yesterday. That's a fair enough statement. Lewis had always been on the fence about college, but decided to give it a try after so many people she trusted were encouraging her to do so. Yet an inability to work on her game at the pace she wanted to ultimately made her rethink things.

"I told [Gator coach Jan Dowling] before the winter break that I was considering not coming back," Lewis said. "And I did some more thinking and decided I needed to make the decision to leave.

"It was hard because I love the girls on the team," she added. "We got along great. I called them [during the break] to tell them what I was doing and they support me. They want me to be happy."

The Jacksonville native, who won the Women's North and South Amateur last summer, says she intends to continue to pursue a college degree from her home while compete as an amateur in 2010.