SCOTTSDALE (Ariz.) — Golf is difficult.
What’s harder than that? What’s even harder? Winning the national championship.
Ask head coaches Mike Small of Illinois and Matt Thurmond of Arizona State. These two are among the best college golf coaches ever. Small is already a Hall of Famer, and Thurmond will be soon. But these two men have not yet experienced what it is like to hold a national championship trophy.
Only 11 coaches are currently active who have felt this way.
Small and Thurmond both have very successful teams.
Small has been with the Illini for 23 years. He has played in the NCAA Finals 16 times in those 23 years, including 14 out of the last 16 seasons.
Thurmond has spent 21 years as a coach, 15 at Washington University and six in Tempe Arizona. His teams have played in 16 out of 20 national championships. Thurmond led Washington to 11 appearances at the finals in 15 years. Thurmond has left Washington to join Arizona State. Washington hasn’t been in the finals for 15 years.
Match play has determined the national champion since 2009. Small and John Fields, both from Texas, are tied for the most coaching appearances at match play. Oklahoma’s Ryan Hybl and Vanderbilt Scott Limbaugh both have six. Thurmond has six – two from Arizona State and three from Washington.
Match play is a leveling of the playing field. It makes it harder to win when you have the best stroke-play team. Oklahoma State was the top seed at the 2018 tournament on the Karsten Creek course, and is the only team to have won the championship. The only No.
Illinois and Arizona State, two of the four top-ranked schools in the nation, are considered by many to be the favorites for stroke play.
They may have already won a championship, as they each won the stroke play portion of the event only to lose in bracket play.
The Illini won the top seed in 2015, at the Concession club in Bradenton (Florida), by finishing two shots ahead of Vanderbilt. 1 seed. Small’s team defeated UCLA in the first round, but lost to Southern California at the semifinals.
Arizona State won the first of Grayhawk’s three finals years in 2021. Oklahoma State finished three shots ahead of the Sun Devils. Thurmond’s team then defeated North Carolina in match play, but lost to Oklahoma State in the semifinals.
Last year, Arizona State lost to Texas in the match-play finals.
Small and Thurmond are two coaches who follow a similar route, always in the conversation when discussing top teams every year.
This is the year that one of them finally meets all the requirements to get his team to match play, and then finds a way to score three points in just three matches in order to win the trophy at the end.
It will be difficult, but possible!
