The Pac-12 Conference (short for Pacific-12 Conference and previously named the Pac-8 Conference and Pac-10 Conference) encompasses schools based in the western US.
It is one of the most prestigious conferences in NCAA golf helped by the top-tier universities that compete in it, including Stanford, USC, UCLA and Arizona State.
As a result, its universities frequently compete in the NCAA Championships, while some of the greatest players in the game’s history have emerged from Pac-12 Conference teams, including Stanford’s Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson of Arizona State.
Those factors help to ensure that winning the Pac-12 Conference is far from merely a regional achievement and frequently propels successful teams into the national spotlight.
The first year of the Pac-12 Conference in men’s college golf came in 1960 when Stanford was the champion ahead of UCLA, and it has claimed the title 10 times in total, most recently in 2023, when Michael Thorbjornsen was the individual champion. Meanwhile, Stanford’s individual Pac-12 Conference champions have included Tiger Woods in 1996 and Karl Vilips in 2024.
Stanford’s Karl Vilips won the 2024 men’s individual title
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Another standout team throughout the history of the men’s Pac-12 Conference has been Arizona State, which has won the championship 14 times, most recently in 2024.
Its players have frequently excelled with individual honors, too, with Mickelson becoming its individual champion in 1990 and Paul Casey achieving it a joint-record three times in succession between 1998 and 2000. In 2016, Jon Rahm took the honors while at the university.
Jon Rahm took the 2016 individual honors at the Pac-12 Championship
(Image credit: Getty Images)
However, the team with the most men’s Pac-12 Championship wins is the University of Southern California (USC), which has enjoyed victory 20 times. Before Casey’s Pac-12 Conference heroics, USC’s Sherman Finger also won the individual title three times, between 1964 and 1966. Its most recent win came in 2018, with Colorado missing out and USC’s Justin Suh taking the individual title.
There is also a women’s Pac-12 Conference, although it only began in 1987. Arizona State won the team championship in the first two years. Nowadays, it has a joint-record…
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