After 41 editions overseen by the National Intercollegiate Golf Association (NAIA), the top men’s collegiate tournament became an NCAA enterprise in 1939. As for the women’s equivalent, it began 43 years later, in 1982.
Through the years, there have been many notable individual title winners, including some who were destined for greatness.
The first men’s NCAA individual title was won by Tulane University’s Vincent D’Antoni, described at the time by the New York Times as “a stocky fellow with a magnificent game around the greens.” Whatever his ability, he didn’t make it in the professional game, although many NCAA title winners who came later did.
The name of one of the individual title winners in the opening decades of the men’s NCAA Division I Golf Championship stands out a mile. In 1961, Ohio State’s Jack Nicklaus beat Purdue’s Mark Darnell to the title.
The following year, Nicklaus won his first Major at the US Open and collected 17 more across a glorious career to cement his position as arguably the greatest player of all time.
Six years after Nicklaus, Colorado’s Hale Irwin won the NCAA Division I Championship title before eventually winning the US Open three times.
After him, Ben Crenshaw became the first person to win the individual title three times, between 1971 and 1973 (although he shared it with Tom Kite in 1972). He eventually won The Masters twice.
Ben Crenshaw shared the men’s NCAA Division I Championship title with Tom Kite in 1972
(Image credit: Getty Images)
At the end of the following decade, Arizona State University’s Phil Mickelson arrived on the college scene and emulated Crenshaw’s three individual titles before winning six Majors in the professional game.
Almost inevitably, Stanford’s Tiger Woods then wrote his name into the NCAA Division I history books with victory in 1996.
Other players who would eventually have successful professional careers also took the honor, including Northwestern’s Luke Donald in 1999, University of Illinois player Thomas Pieters in 2012, California’s Max Homa the year after and SMU’s Bryson DeChambeau in 2015.
The women’s NCAA Division I Championship may have had considerably fewer editions, but some of the names of the title winners still stand out.
The first winner, in 1982, was the…
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