Two summers ago, in the sweltering heat and humidity that often marinates Hilton Head Island, S.C., in July, Mike Holder came up to me and asked what seemed at the time to be a fairly innocuous question: How would you make the NCAA Championship better?

I was covering the AJGA's Rolex Tournament of Champions at Long Cove Club, and he was there recruiting high schoolers to come to his fabled program at Oklahoma State. Holder had just accepted a spot on the NCAA men's Division I golf committee and hinted that changes might be in store down the road. Having written a profile for Golf World on the legendary coach, still four months removed from him stepping down as Cowboys' coach to take the OSU athletic director's job, I knew Holder had some ideas rattling around his head. Nevertheless, he was not afraid to seek out other opinions, even from a member of the jaded media. I told him I'd think about it and send some suggestions via e-mail.

As it turns out, I never got around to passing anything on to Holder (blame my editors for all the work they gave me). Apparently, though, he and the other five members of the committee weren't holding their breath. Since meeting last June following the 2007 NCAA Championship, the committee (which Holder is about to become chair) has crafted two proposals that revamp the structure of the postseason, each set for review by the NCAA Championships Cabinet at its next meeting in September. The first increases the number of Division I regional sites from three to six, effective in 2008-09. The second calls for the NCAA individual winner to be determined after 54 holes rather than the current 72, effective for the coming 2007-08 season.

Even more sweeping, however, is a third proposal that fundamentally changes how the NCAA men's team champion is determined and appears close to being finalized, the golf committee set to convene via conference call next Monday and likely give it its seal of approval. The plan would have 30 schools advance from regionals to nationals (same as the current setup) where they would play 54 holes of traditional medal play. At that point, the top eight teams would advance to a three-day medal/match play competition (a la the NCAA basketball tournament) to determine the national champion.

"I've been around a long time, and I think that's one of the best [idea] I've heard," said Gregg Grost, a former college coach and the current executive director of the Golf Coaches' Association of America.

Indeed, at a town-hall meeting of coaches held by the GCAA at last week's U.S. Junior Amateur, a majority of the roughly 80 attendees polled said they were in favor of the plan, which if approved by the NCAA would go into affect for the 2008-09 season. (Conversely, when asked about crowning an individual champion after 54 holes, 32 voted against the idea while 27 were for it, the rest abstaining.)

In writing a story about these proposals for this week's issue of Golf World, I noted that there will be many college golf fans who wonder why try fixing the NCAA postseason if it's not broken. Admittedly, I can't say I thought there was anything wrong with the current 72-hole, stroke-play format.

Still, I keep coming back to the question Holder posed to me two years ago. How would you make the NCAA Championship better? This plan, which amounts to the biggest change to the college postseason in decades, may well be the answer.

College golf has received some criticism in the recent past. Earlier this year in Golf Digest, an article by Hank Haney suggested golfers who aspired to be the world's best players might be better served by not playing college golf. Agree or disagree with the premise, it ultimately got people thinking about ways to make college golf more attractive.

To make college golf more attractive to casual golf fans, something radical probably is in order. The current scoring format for college tournaments—play five players/count four scores—simply is too confusing for anyone but but friends and family members of current college golfers to stay interested. I've covered the college beat since 1997, and I still have trouble figuring out where everything stands during the course of a tournament. It's the single biggest negative the sport has. Creating a championship structure, then, that doesn't rely on that format is a move forward.

Consider this past June's NCAA Championship. Media accounts around the country detailed Stanford's victory. Forgotten in most pieces, though, were how other teams fared. Do you remember who finished tied for third? Charlotte and Lamar. How about who finished fifth? Coastal Carolina. Each had its best finish in school history, yet only the small universe of people familiar with college golf understand how good a performance each school had. Not casual fans at any rate.

Casual fans can, however, identify with the idea of Charlotte, Lamar and Coastal Carolina advancing to the "Elite Eight" or reaching the semifinals before being knocked out of the NCAA tournament by eventual champion Stanford. So too can the mainstream media.

Indeed, the potential for more media coverage, whether print or electronic, of college golf is no small reason to consider changing the format. After all, college golf struggles to get its championship televised live despite the existence of national cable network devoted to golf and two national cable networks devoted to college sports.

There are questions remaining regarding the details of implementing the new plans (how do you score individual matches, what happens if there's a tie, etc.). Thankfully the golf committee isn't letting such minutiae bog things down just yet. These are things that can be worked out. The bigger issue now is whether the Division I women's golf committee will follow the men's lead and consider changing the structure of the women's championship. Having the champion of college golf determined one way for the men and one way for the women would be a bit disjointed to say the least.

Ultimately, all the proposals will have to go through the NCAA's multi-level approval process, with no guarantee that they'll come out the same way they came in. Still, that we've gotten to this point says a lot for the fact that the powers that be in college golf are determined to look to the future.

How would you make the NCAA Championship better? It’s a question you can never stop trying to answer.

Professional golf's gain was college golf's loss today when Daniel Summerhays made his pro debut, shooting a even-par 71 at the Nationwide Tour's Cox Classic in Omaha, Neb. Three weeks ago this was a sentence the 23-year-old from Provo, Utah had no idea anyone would be writing. If you're asking me, though, it's about six weeks earlier than the sentence should have be written.

Having played well enough as a junior at BYU this past college season to be named a first-team All-American--recall he shot a 60 to tie the NCAA 18-hole scoring mark last fall--Summerhays earned a special exemption into the Nationwide Tour stop at Ohio State's Scarlet Course earlier this month. Once there, he managed to win the darn thing, shooting a six-under-par 278 and putting an abrupt end to his summer vacation.

Becoming the first amateur to claim victory in a Nationwide Tour event, Summerhays had 60 days to turn professional and receive full-exempt status on the tour through 2008. The grace period coincidentally (and conveniently) would have allowed him to compete for the U.S. in the Walker Cup at Northern Ireland's Royal County Down this September. (His victory likely earned him a spot on the 10-man roster.)

Instead of sticking around to play for the USA, or for one more year at BYU, Summerhays decided to strike while the iron is hot, turning pro immediately with the idea of playing enough Nationwide Tour events between now and the end of the year to get into the top 25 on the tour's money list and earn a PGA Tour card.

"I don't know what playing in the Walker Cup could have done for my career that winning on the Nationwide Tour didn't do last week," he said. "My value to sponsors is probably higher right now than it would have been if I waited almost two months to play in the Walker Cup."

Summerhays is a personable, mature young man who, like his older brother Boyd, spent two years away from the game while serving a Mormon mission in Chile in 2003-04. No doubt he and his wife, Emily, made a thorough review of his options here; prior to the win, he intended to return to BYU for the fall of his senior year but likely was going to go PGA Tour Q school as an amateur. I just hope that five, 10 years from now he doesn't regret not waiting a few more weeks to make the move to the pros.

Ultimately, the experience of playing in the Walker Cup is one that most participants say only exceeds their expectations. Sure, Summerhays would have had fewer events to try and claim a PGA Tour card, but he would have been richer for it via the experience of playing for his country in such a premier event.

** Another player who will have to decide whether or not to turn professional in the next few months is Colt Knost, who finished up his college career at SMU last spring and recently won the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship. Knost will remain an amateur at least through the summer, hoping to be picked for the Walker Cup team (my guess is he secured a spot with his recent impressive triumph). The question then is whether he stays an amateur through next April and play in the Masters, an invitation being given to APL champions since 1989 provided they're still amateurs.

If Knost waits, he does put his career on hold for a while as he was going to try to play in Q school this fall. That's asking a lot for Knost, who unlike Summerhays, has used up his college eligibility.

The simple solution for Knost is to continue to get ready for Q school but enter as an amateur. If he gets to the final stage and assures himself status on the Nationwide or PGA Tour, turn pro and get a jump on your career. If he doesn't, he's still an amateur, still gets to play at Augusta National in April and makes the jump the next week, perhaps even with a little more name recognition (leading to more sponsors dollars) because he played well as an amateur in the Masters.

COLUMBUS, OHIO--I've heard many college coaches lamenting about how for the past two years top high school golfers are making verbal commitments to colleges at younger and younger ages. (Cody Gribble, a talented 16-year-old from Dallas, already has said he's going to Texas and he isn't even a junior in high school yet.) I have to admit, however, I didn't really appreciate just what was happening until I arrived last week at Ohio State's Scarlet Course for the 30th AJGA Rolex Tournament of Champions.

There the tournament staff provided me a list of participants that included what year in school they were and, if applicable, where they say they're going to college. I couldn't believe the number of teenagers, boys and girls alike, who haven't yet started their senior year in high school but already essentially have ended the recruiting process by pledging allegiance to a school.

Indeed, of the 36 boys from the class of 2008 in the field at the T of C, 16 already had made verbal commitments to schools, including top-ranked Peter Uihlein (Oklahoma State), third-ranked Morgan Hoffmann (Oklahoma State), fourth-ranked Wesley Graham (Florida State), sixth-ranked Sang Yi (LSU) and eight-ranked David Chung (Stanford). Of the 26 girls, 10 had made early verbals, not counting the top-ranked girls' player, recent U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links champion Mina Harigae, who skipped the tournament after making the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open but already announced her intention of playing at Duke.

The numbers were so large, I devoted this week's Amateur Spotlight section in Golf World to the trend, expressing some of the concerns coaches have with the situation.

Most recruits say that they're making the early decision--usually in the spring of their junior year--because they want to make the recruiting process less chaotic and be able to stay focused on developing their games. That's no doubt true, but there also seem to be other factors at play. No recruit would say it publicly, but some admitted privately that they committed during unofficial visits to schools because they believed (whether flat out told by a coach or implied by the coach's actions) the scholarship being offered would be pulled off the table if they left campus without agreeing to go to the school.

There are a variety of potential problems that stem from kids committing to schools before July 1 of the summer prior to their high school senior year, the day college coaches officially can begin calling teenagers after being able to write them throughout their junior years. For the recruits themselves, the issue is whether they have really done enough homework to find the school that's right for them? Or have they just heard about a school from friends and decided, yeah I want to go there too.

Fewer and fewer players are going on "official" school-paid visits, a two-day trip to campus that used to be considered the make-or-break tool for a teenager to decide where he or she was heading. Without this visit, getting to see school in session and meeting your future teammates in a day-to-day setting, how much do teens really know about a college or university?

For the coaches, as I wrote in Golf World this week, sure there's security in knowing you have players lined up a months in advance but do you know if the player you've recruited will be the same one that arrives on campus? "In this sport, just because a kid is good in ninth grade doesn't mean he's going to be good as a freshman in college," Coastal Carolina men's coach Allen Terrell told me last week. "You're running the risk that a girl friend comes along or that driver's license comes along or he grows a foot and his swing totally changes."

Bruce Heppler, Georgia Tech men's coach, said that he only made two phone calls on July 1 in large part because the other players he had been looking at in the Class of 2008 had made verbals to other schools.

"The kids themselves have already recruited the other kids," Heppler said. "You know in the old days a kid from Seattle might come to the Rolex and play with a kid from Florida and they might become friends. They might call each other two weeks before a tournament and say 'Hey, you want to play a practice round?' and that was that. Now with text messaging, they're talking to each other every single day. And what you have is you have these kids who have started to run in groups, and they're recruiting each other. And if you don't have one of these guys, by the time you write a letter in September [of their junior year] you're done."

Other coaches echoed similar concerns. Sure, it's better to know if you're out of the running for a player in July than in November, because you've got time to pursue other players. But at what price?

Heppler had an interesting idea of how to address the new phenomenon: Change the NCAA recruiting rules to allow coaches to talk to parents of prospective student-athletes at tournaments regardless of the age of their son or daughter (currently you can't talk to parents of recruits before they're senior year).

"I'm all for not talking to the kids ever at a tournament," Heppler explained. "They're here to do their business. But I've spend $2,000. And those parents have spent $2,000 or more to come [to a tournament]. Well, why can't you then talk to them when they're [child is] in the eighth grade, ninth grade? Because [parents] can always say 'Hey look, we appreciate it but we're not interested.' In essence you've come for the same reason. They've come to expose their child to college golf. And you've come to expose them to you program. I can sell my [program].

"How uncomfortable is it that you're recruiting this kid and nobody else is and you're out there with this mom, it's you two for four hours and you're not going to talk to them? It's stupid. Because they want to. You're not bothering anybody. I've thought about this for a long time because you're spending a lot of time and money to just walk around and be quiet. If commitments have moved a year and a half, why not move the contact up?"

Of course, such a change won't ever get passed by the NCAA. Still, it provides food for thought.

COLUMBUS, OHIO--Some day in the future, we're going to call this off-season in college golf "The great coaching swap of 2007." This week's latest move: Greg Allen jumping from Arizona to Vanderbilt to take the women's coach job in Nashville.

As was the case when O.D. Vincent moved from the men's job at UCLA to Duke last week, family was the main reason behind Allen coming east. Both he and his wife, Julie, are from Kentucky and have relatives in the area. "We've always had an interest in getting back to the part of the country where we're from," Allen said via cell phone earlier today. "We thought it would be nice for out kids to see their grandparents more than twice a year."

Allen replaces Martha Richards, a close friend of his from when they were both assistant coaches at Texas in the late 1990s. When Richards took the job at Longhorns women's job last month, and Vanderbilt officials contacted Allen about the Lady Commodores job, Allen was in frequent contact with Richards. "I had to charge my battery a couple times a day [in my cell phone] from all the text messages and calls I was making to her," Allen joked.

Allen (above; photo courtesy of Arizona Sports Information) slept on the decision Monday night before signing all the papers and faxing them to Vanderbilt Tuesday morning. He then contacted his players at Arizona to break them news. "There's no easy way to say goodbye," Allen said. "It was the toughest thing I've had to do in my [coaching] life."

He also made calls to several of his new players at Vanderbilt, including All-American Jacqui Concolino and incoming recruit Megan Grehan. If everything goes as planned, Allen hopes to be here at Ohio State's Scarlet Course, later this week attending the end of the AJGA's Rolex Tournament of Champions and starting his recruiting for the Class of 2008.

The question, of course, is who's next to move? The Arizona women's job is one of the high profile positions in college golf, seemingly attractive for many. The problem now comes down to timing. Any high-profile coach who had showed interest in moving from their current job is likely to have already done so, or isn't likely to make the move less than eight weeks before the start of the 2007-08 season.

The same problem might be one UCLA finds itself in when trying to replace Vincent as the men's coach. The expense of living in the Los Angeles area—something that worked against Bruins in Vincent's case—just might keep others away even though UCLA will be a top-five ranked team come the start of the season.

LEXINGTON, KY.--The USGA concluded the 31st U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Championship recently at Kearney Hill GL. And as one of the couple hundred people in attendance, I can attest that they indeed gave out the Robert F. Dwyer Trophy to 17-year-old Mina Harigae, a high school senior-to-be from Monterey, Calif., who cruised to a 4-and-3 triumph in the 36-hole final over Stephany Fleet thanks to stellar ball striking and one hot putter. What I can't swear to, however, is that I saw what the folks in Far Hills, N.J., had hoped might happen when they created the event in 1977.

I have lamented previously regarding my disappointment that the men's Amateur Public Links no longer really showcases working-class public-course golfers, but instead has turned into an event for high school and college kids. The same, unfortunately, is the case with the WAPL.

Consider that the average age of the 156-player field this past week was 20.3. And that's including the fact 62-year-old Taffy Brower, a noted career amateur, playing in the competition for the first time. When the cut to match play's 64 came Wednesday morning, the remaining players were all of 18.3 years old.

It's hard to get past the fact that no one older than 23 has ever won the tournament (Amy Fruhwirth in 1992). And for the fifth high school player to win since 2000.

Fleet, who grew up next to a small course in DeWitt, Mich., where she learned to play the game, at least provided some tangible current ties to public golf. For the past four summers the Eastern Michigan junior-to-be has worked in the "bag services area" at a pair of daily-fee courses, Hawk Hollow and Eagle Eye, using downtime to hone her home-made swing that has a bit of a Jim Thorpe, wristy finish. This was Fleet's first USGA event, having survived a playoff in sectional qualifying to make the field. When she found out she was exempt now into the U.S. Women's Amateur, the look of surprise was obvious. She says she'll bring the running shoes she wore this past week (to keep her feet comfortable with so many rounds to play) and give it another shot.

I have nothing against Harigae, who has been making headlines for her play ever since she won her first California Women's Amateur title at age 12 (she was too young to compete for the junior title). She does not come from a country-club background, her parents run a Japanese restaurant in Pacific Grove, Calif., and she has worked hard for her success (this was amazingly her 13th USGA event, and she'll play No. 14 this week at the U.S. Women’s Open). It's just that I'm not sure a player who works with an instructor at the Butch Harmon School of Golf, going to Las Vegas once a month, is exactly what the spirit of the WAPL intended.

Maybe I just need to get over this, and accept that the men's and women's mid-amateurs have become what the PubLinks once were. Of course, the problem with that is many of the top mid-amateurs, particularly on the men's side are actually reinstated professionals, but that's a whole other issue. It's just that watching the days of the working Joe (or Jane) have a chance to claim a national title now slip away is kind of sad.