Tuesday 07/08/2008
July 8, 2008
Clemson, SC – The NCAA Men’s Golf Championship will have significant changes in 2009. For the first time, the champion will be determined through a format that will include stroke play and match play. The six-person NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Committee finalized the format for the 2009 finals at its annual meeting June 18-20 in Colorado Springs, Colo. Mike Holder, athletic director at Oklahoma State and chairman of the committee, announced the changes.
In 2009 the entire 30-team field will play three rounds at the site of the NCAA Championship, Inverness Golf Club in Toledo, OH. At the end of the 54 holes, an individual champion will be crowned and only the top eight teams will advance to a match play playoff.
The eight teams will play a straight match play competition with the number one team after 54 holes of stroke play facing the number-eight team, number-seven will play number-two, number-six will play number-three and number-four will face number-five. The winners advance to the Final Four, then the two winners will play for the national championship on the final day.
The lineups for each team will be based on the player rankings in the 54 holes of stroke play, not the lineup entered by coaches prior to the tournament. The number-one player for the #1 seed will play the #1 player for the eighth place team, and so on.
Each match will be worth one point. A match that is tied after 18 holes will be awarded a half-point. If the team score is tied after the completion of all five matches, a playoff using the combined strokes of all five players from an extra hole will decide the winner. If there still is a tie, the playoff would continue to another hole until there is a winner.
The committee also announced that there will be six regional sites in 2009 instead of the three sites the tournament has had since 1989. A school that plays host to a regional will not be allowed to play in that regional unless that team is ranked in the top 30 nationally by the committee.
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