The Loop
Format finalized for NCAA Women's D-I Championship
Seven months removed from announcing it would incorporate match play to determine a national champion starting in 2015, the NCAA Women's Division I golf committee has finally determined just how it will do it.
On Wednesday, the NCAA Division I Championships/Sports Management Cabinet announced it had approved the recommendation from the women's golf committee to use the "4-2" format model: four days of stroke play, the first three determining the eight teams that advance to match play with the last used to crown a individual medalist, followed by two days of match play with the quarterfinals and semifinals played on one day and an 18-hole championship match played the next. This is the same format being used this spring by the men at the NCAA D-I Championship.
The women's committee proposed this model Jan. 13 after holding a teleconference in which members weight its merits against a format that would have had only three days of stroke play -- which would have determined the schools to advance to match play as well as an individual champion -- with the three rounds of match play then contested over the next three days. (This was the format that the men used the past three seasons.)
The decision to follow the 4-2 plan was made in part based on feedback the committee got from coaches at the end of 2013 after both plans were explained during the WGCA Annual Convention. Of 191 coaches who answered a WGCA survey, 101 favored the 4-2 option compared to 87 for the 3-3 format and three abstaining votes.
Arguably one of the reasons the 4-2 format received the majority of votes among the coaches surveyed is that it is format preferred by representatives of the Golf Channel, which will be televising the women's championship from The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla., in 2015. Golf Channel is slated to broadcast the final three days of the event, which means that under the 4-2 format it will be showing the crowning of the individual champion on the first day of its telecast and the team champion on the third and final day.