Got to do a rare thing for me yesterday: actually play a round of golf.

It was only my third 18-hole round of the year, which means President Obama has played more golf than I have in 2009. I'm not sure if that says more about his ability to juggle his schedule and make time to play the game, or my inability to do the same. At any rate ...

I have a 12.7 handicap index, so my 92 at New Haven CC was not a horrible score, but certainly not my best effort. Suffice it to say, if I was a junior golfer and had aspirations to play Division I college golf, I'd best be trying to get in more practice ... or making alternative plans.

If I didn't know this already, I had it confirmed when I tried to see how my scores would hold up if I was playing in a Division I tournament by plugging in some numbers at www.collegegolf.com.

The site is the brainchild of Dean Frischknecht with the help of Mark Laesch of Golfstat. Frischknecht has been the author of the Ping American College Golf Guide for more than two decades, and his tireless efforts to help junior golfers find a place for them to play at the collegiate level has been a tremendous service. 

Going to the website, I entered my average score and the average length course I play on. The website then converts my stats into "adjusted" college scores for any number of individual tournaments. If the average scoring in a certain round at a certain tournament is higher than normal (perhaps due to weather), the conversion takes that into account (along with the yardage the tournament was played at), allowing you to get a fair assessment of how you would stand if you too had played in that college event.

Being a University of Michigan graduate, I decided to first see how I would have done if I were playing for the Big Ten title last May at Penn State's Blue Course. The numbers obviously weren't all that surprising: I would have been dead last, shooting rounds of 92-93-93-94 for a 372, 31 shots worse than the actual last-place finisher and 61 back of the second-to-last-place finisher. (Ugh)

Fooling around a little bit, the same outcome happened at the ACC Championship ... and the SEC ... and the Pac-10 ... and well you get where I'm going. I even tried a fewer lower-profile D-I conferences. Suffice it to say, I saw I was out of my league at the Division I level.

So I tried D-II, D-III, NAIA, NJCAA to see if I might fare any better. Every now and then I'd finish a few places better than last, but never close to contention.

Again, I didn't have any real delusions that my golf game was scholarship worthy, but the website was a pretty simple way for me to see how I stack up in the big picture of college golf. More importantly, it's a great tool for junior golfers who are starting to explore potentially playing at the college level and want a realistic idea of how their game might compare.

If you're a junior golfer who hasn't given collegegolf.com a look, you're missing out.

For the second time in five years, Illinois men's coach Mike Small has won the PGA of America's national championship for its rank-and-file members.

A final-round 68 at Twin Warriors GC in Santa Ana Pueblo, N.M., earlier today gave Small gave him seven-under 277 total and a one-stroke victory over Mark Sheftic and Steve Schneiter at the PGA Professional National Championship.

"This is huge," Small said. "It validates the one I had four years ago and sets me up for a good year-and-a-half of golf. It also brings credibility to our program."

It also secured him a place in the field at next month's PGA Championship at Hazeltine National GC outside of Minneapolis. It will be Small's eighth appearance in a major championship. He made the cut in the 2005 and 2007 PGA, earning the low club professional honors in the later

Small has finished second in the event on two other occassions.

Should the University of Georgia athletic department be contacting local authorities to see if they can have grand theft charges levied against their counterparts at the University of Oklahoma? Less than a week after luring Georgia assistant Ryan Hybl to take the Sooners head men's job, OU officials have done the same on the women's side, signing Bulldog assistant Veronique Drouin to be the women's head coach.

"Veronique diligently prepared for the role of a head coach and demonstrated specific abilities to identify, recruit and develop the best and the brightest student-athletes in women's golf," said OU athletic director Joe Castiglione. "Her philosophy and history of developing young people in the classroom and on the golf course fits very precisely with our goals in athletics."

A Quebec native, Drouin was an assistant at UGa for three years and before that coached as a graduate assistant at Kent State for 2 1/2 years. A 2003 graduate of Kent State, she was the Mid-American Conference player of the year as a senior.

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Another job got filled today as well, as Texas Tech announced the hiring of JoJo Robertson as its women's coach. Robertson, an All-American at Oklahoma State and a two-time U.S. Women's APL champion, had been an assistant at Purdue the past five seasons.

"JoJo Robertson was one of the first names we heard in the beginning of our search for a women's golf coach," said Red Raider athletic director Gerald Myers at a press conference today. "As we proceeded through the search, her name kept coming up. Her background as a player and coach fit the criteria that we were looking for in a coach. We think JoJo will be a very successful women's golf coach for Texas Tech."

Sorry for the silence on my end the last few days ... finally have dried out from Bethpage.

I talked to Clemson men's coach Larry Penley Monday afternoon, not long after former Tiger Lucas Glover won the U.S. Open title. Not surprisingly Penley was elated for Glover. So naturally, Penley was glued to a TV watching his former charge win the national championship, right?

Well sort of ... Penley was in the middle of teaching a summer golf camp back on campus. Some time before noon, he finally had everyone stop for an extended lunch and then got to retreat to the Clemson team room to watch Glover pull out the victory.

*****

The men's coaching carousel got into full swing this past week with a couple big jobs being filled. Nick Clinard goes to Auburn (leaving the UCF position open), and former Georgia All-American Ryan Hybl heads to Oklahoma.

Hybl's move comes with some interesting irony in that his football playing older brother, Nate, transferred from Georgia to Oklahoma and eventually was the Sooners' starting quarterback in the early 2000s. As was the case with Jan Dowling going to Florida, I'm surprised the OU athletic department didn't get somebody with some head coaching experience, but I think they made a solid choice in Hybl. He's very personable and should have success in the recruiting process.

Clinard's move to Auburn also makes a lot of sense. He had success with the Knights and is more than ready to make the transition to the SEC. The hard part about this move is what it does to UCF. It's a mid-major program that was starting to thrive but loses momentum now that it's leader is gone.

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The opening that intrigues me most that's yet to be filled is at Houston, where the contract of Vince Jarrett was not renewed in May. Since then, a new athletic director (Mack Rhoades) has also been hired, which would suggest that the position might not be filled until after the magic July 1 date where coaches can begin to talk to high school seniors-to-be.

Under legendary coach Dave Williams, Houston was the dominant program in men's college golf for three plus decades. That it has all but collapsed in the last 15 years is pretty amazing to me. I wrote a feature on the program's sad fate a few years back, and since then the situation has gotten no better. Economics has been a big problem, in that funding for the program has been lacking. What's even more sad, however, is how the Cougar alumni who played during the glory days has essentially sat on its hands and watched the collapse. Today's recruits have no knowledge of Houston as a strong program, and with Fred Couples soon turning 50, it's last great PGA Tour player is also almost at the end of his career.

Just what the program can do, if anything, to right itself is an interesting point of debate. While there are plenty of good facilities in the great Houston area for the team to utilize, not having a true home course to call its own has put the team at a significant disadvantage. It will be interesting to see if any progress can be made by the next hire. 

The arms race among college golf programs to build the newest, biggest, fanciest courses/practice facilities doesn't seem to have been curbed too much by a sagging economy. At least that's the impression I get from having my e-mail inbox the past week.

Officials at SMU announced last Monday that they had broken ground on the Payne Stewart Learning Center at Dallas Athletic Club. The Center, expected to be completed at the end of 2010, will consist of a teaching facility with two indoor hitting bays and state-of-the-art video swing analysis equipment; a team clubhouse that will include locker rooms for the men's and women's programs as well as a "Hall of Champions"; and a four-hole short-game course by Nicklaus Design.

The news came not long after Chattanooga's athletic department unveiled that it had also broken ground on a new player development facility for the Mocs' men's and women's programs. The project calls for a 10-acre, double-sided practice range with four auxiliary short-game practice areas as well as a three-hole practice course. The facility is being worked on in conjunction with The First Tee of Chattanooga with the first phase expected to be completed this fall.

Several programs continue to have facilities in the works or near completion. N.C. State's Lonnie Poole GC is set to open this fall. Ohio State already has the Scarlet Course but will have a 26,000-square-foot practice facility ready for the Buckeye men and women to use starting next January.

FARMINGDALE, N.Y.--There's 15 amateur here in the field at Bethpage Black for the 109th U.S. Open, all either in college or just having finished up school. Still, that number paltry in comparison to the 29 amateurs (19 with college ties, nine still in high school and one mid-amateur) that have qualified for the U.S. Women's Open.

Here's the list of players competing at Saucon Valley CC in Bethlehem, Pa. FYI ... their average age is 18.5.

Ashleigh Albrecht, Kentucky (18)
Marina Alex, Vanderbilt (18)
Brittany Altomare, Virginia (18)
Meghan Bolger-Stasi (31)
Kathleen Ekey, Alabama (22)
Kaitlin Drolson, Pepperdine (19)
Lindy Duncan, Duke (18)
Yueer-Cindy Feng (13)
Mallory Fraiche, Arkansas-Little Rock (21)
Ani Gulugian (17)
Nannette Hill, Wake Forest (22)
Stefanie Kenoyer, Furman (20)
Alice Kim, UC Davis (19)
Kimberly Kim, Denver (17)
Jessica Korda (16)
Cindy LaCrosse, Louisville (22)
Alison Lee (14)
Tiffany Lua, UCLA (18)
Azahara Munoz, Arizona State (21)
Kristen Park (16)
Katherine Perry (17)
Candace Schepperle, Auburn (20)
Michelle Shin, Wake Forest (18)
Jennifer Song, USC (19)
Chelsea Stelzmiller, UC Davis (20)
Victoria Tanco (15)
Alexis Thompson (14)
Mariko Tumangan (15)
Allie White, Ohio State (19)

The men's coaching carousel finally started moving this past weekend with Charlotte taking the interim tag off Adam Pry on Friday and Ohio State naming Donnie Darr to replace the retiring Jim Brown on Saturday. Now, the women's side is beginning to see movement as the Florida just named Jan Dowling, most recently the assistant coach at Duke, to oversee the women's golf program in Gainesville.

At first blush, Dowling seems a bit of a surprise pick for the Gators job. A 2002 graduate of Kent State, the Branford, Ontario, native has just three years experience as an assistant (the first two at her alma mater) and none as a head coach (although she did an admirable job filling in for Dan Brooks last fall when he was missing in action due to illness).

At the same time, hiring young, up-and-coming coaches has been Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley’s modus operandi in recent years. According to the Florida athletic department, Dowling becomes the 12th different current Gator coach to enter her first season at UF with five or fewer previous years as a collegiate head coach. (Also on that list is football coach Urban Meyer and men's basketball coach Billy Donovan, both of whom have subsequently won two national championships.)

"Throughout this search, Jan Dowling's name kept coming up as a fast-rising coaching talent," said Foley. "She has solid credentials as a player and as a coach. Florida's had success developing young, gifted coaches, and Jan certainly fits that model. Jan loves coaching and loves the game of golf. She is confident that she can lead this program and recruit talented student-athletes to Florida. We believe that Jan will be very successful at Florida."

Scott Lewis, a rising sophomore at UC Santa Barbara, and David Erdy, a rising sophomore at Indiana are now in the field at the U.S. Open after Dudley Hart and Shingo Katayama withdrew from the tournament with back issues.

Lewis and Erdy are officially the 15th and 16th amateurs in the field, the most this decade. However, recent Duke graduate Clark Klaasen has said he is thinking of turning pro when he registers this week.

The Alabama men's and women's golf programs were among 16 different sports teams at the Tuscaloosa, Ala., school that the NCAA put on three years' probation June 11 for major violations due to the misuse of free textbooks. The NCAA report noted 201 athletes obtained "impermissible benefits" by using their scholarships to obtain free textbooks for other students. In the majority of cases, the impermissible benefits were less than $100 and in some instances the student-athletes were unaware of any potential rules violation being committed. (To see a PDF version of the NCAA report, click here.)

The NCAA specifically noted that 22 student-athletes--none of them golfers--were, however, found to have committed "willful and intentional violations." These student-athletes competed on the Crimson Tide football, men's tennis and men's and women's track teams, and those teams will be forced to vacate any wins in which the student-athletes participated. (The football team will be forced to give up 21 wins from the 2005-06 to the 2007-08 seasons.)

The school also has been fined $43,900.

No specific golfers were named in the report and the NCAA accessed no other penalties to either of the golf teams. Also no coach was identified as having been involved in the matter or had knowledge that it was going on.

The USGA frequently gets creative with its pairings for the first and second rounds of the U.S. Open, often putting together a couple of threesomes that all played at the same college, among other things. This year, that creativity extended to the amateurs in the field. In the 7 a.m. group (first off in the 109th Open), Oklahoma State's Rickie Fowler will play with former Cowboys Casey Wittenberg and Bo Van Pelt (hopefully, for coach Mike McGraw's sake, Wittenberg won't convince Fowler that it's fine to leave school early).

Similarly, the 1:03 p.m. time Thursday has Clemson's Kyle Stanley playing alongside former Tigers Lucas Glover and D.J. Trahan. (For the entire list of tee times, click here.)

On the surface such pairings might not seem like a big deal, but considering how much more comfortable they'll likely make Fowler and Stanley feel, it could help these two amateurs as they try to make the cut at Bethpage next week.