The first Golfweek/Sagarin college teams rankings are out and there are no surprises with who the top men’s and top women’s teams are right out of the box.

North Carolina, which lost in the semifinals of the 2023 NCAA Championships in May, will start the new campaign in the No. 1 spot.

The Stanford Cardinal, which also reached the final four last spring before getting knocked out, is the top team in the women’s game.

The Golfweek/Sagarin rankings were released on Sept. 28 and will be updated every Friday throughout the season.

Defending men’s champion Florida is No. 16.

The top 10 in men’s golf looks like this:

1. North Carolina
2. Auburn
3. Washington
4. Georgia Tech
5. Tennessee
6. Ole Miss
7. Vanderbilt
8. Arizona State
9. Texas
10. Illinois

North Carolina’s roster is highlighted by David Ford, Maxwell Ford, Austin Greaser, Dylan Menante and Kenan Poole. The Tar Heels already won their first tournament, taking first in the Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational.

In the women’s rankings, Wake Forest, which won it all last season, is No. 2 to start this year.

Here’s the women’s top 10:

1. Stanford
2. Wake Forest
3. Arkansas
4. USC
5. South Carolina
6. Oregon
7. Auburn
8. Ole Miss
9. Clemson
10. Texas A&M

Stanford has started its season with a win in the 2023 Carmel Cup at Pebble Beach with Megha Ganne winning the individual championship. The Cardinal roster also features Rachel Heck, Kelly Xu, Paula Martin Sampedro, Sadie Engleman and Caroline Sturdza.

This season, the men’s and women’s championships will be held at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California, the first of a three-year commitment. Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, hosted the previous three seasons, except for 2020, when the championships were canceled due to the COVID pandemic.

A sub-60 round has never happened in college golf.

Nick Dunlap was a lip-out birdie putt from being the first.

Playing with his Alabama Crimson Tide teammates in the Hamptons Intercollegiate at Maidstone Golf Club in East Hampton, New York, Dunlap was on his 36th hole of the day.

He had already posted a 69 and he was 12 under through 17 on his second 18 when he faced a putt of about eight feet for a closing birdie. Had it dropped, he would’ve notched a 59 and become the first to reach that hallowed ground in the college game.

But – if we haven’t spoiled the video yet – it wasn’t meant to be.

Nick Dunlap @AlabamaMGolf joins #Club60 with a near birdie for 59 at the Hamptons Intercollegiate! pic.twitter.com/TddV87vzTc

— Lance Ringler (@GolfweekRingler) October 2, 2023

Dunlap opened par-eagle-birdie to get things going and made the turn in 5-under 30. He then birdied the 10th, parred the 11th and then ripped off six straight birdies. He had 10 birdies in all but couldn’t quite get that last one to drop.

Nonetheless, Dunlap signed for a 60 to become the 18th golfer in the men’s college game to do so.

A former Air Force men’s golf head coach violated NCAA rules when he knowingly participated in impermissible sports wagering, including placing bets on the football program at Air Force, according to an agreement released by the Division I Committee on Infractions.

The former head coach was not named in the report. Air Force would not confirm the coach’s identity to Golfweek but did provide this statement:

“The U.S. Air Force Academy is pleased to have this issue resolved after working collaboratively with the NCAA Enforcement Staff and taking full responsibility, consistent with our institutional values. While the individuals’ actions were disappointing, the identification of the infractions and work throughout the negotiated resolution process shows that we have a robust NCAA compliance program and that our monitoring procedures are working. We will learn from the missteps and double down on our educational and monitoring efforts to avoid future infractions,” Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Richard Clark and Director of Athletics Nathan Pine said.

The violations occurred when the former coach created an account for an online sports wagering program using his then-girlfriend’s identification information because he knew NCAA rules prohibited participating in wagering on sports (at any level) the NCAA sponsors. Over the course of four months, he wagered $9,259 on 253 occasions — both professional and college sports — using that account. Of those wagers, 107 were on NCAA events, including six Air Force football games.

Because NCAA rules do not permit sports wagering, the head coach’s conduct violated NCAA principles of honesty and sportsmanship. Because of his personal involvement in the violations and his efforts to conceal behavior he knew was impermissible, he did not promote an atmosphere of compliance and thus violated NCAA head coach responsibility rules.

The parties used ranges identified by the Division I membership-approved infractions penalty guidelines to agree upon Level I-mitigated penalties for the university and Level I-aggravated penalties for the men’s golf head coach. There were also sanctions levied against the men’s ice hockey program.

The full list of penalties include:

• Three additional years of probation, to be served after the school’s existing probationary period stemming from a previous infractions case, extending the probationary period until September 2027.
• A $5,000 fine.
• A two-week prohibition in all recruiting communications in men’s ice hockey.
• A five-year show-cause order for the former men’s golf head coach. During the show-cause order, any employing member institution shall restrict the former head coach from any athletically related position. If the former head coach becomes employed in the first year after the show-cause order, he shall be suspended for 50% of the men’s golf regular season.

Members of the Committee on Infractions are drawn from the NCAA membership and members of the public. The members of the panel who reviewed this case are Norman Bay, attorney in private practice; Vince Nicastro, deputy commissioner and chief operating officer of the Big East; and Dave Roberts, special advisor to Southern California and chief hearing officer for the panel.

Pepperdine is on a roll that dates to April. The Waves have won five of their last six starts, with the latest victory coming in familiar territory.

The Golfweek Red Sky Challenge is the team’s second start this fall and second win. In Pepperdine’s title defense at the scenic layout, nestled into the mountains at more than 8,000 feet in Wolcott, Colo., and its fifth victory here overall in the tournament’s 13-year history, the Waves were even par for 54 holes to edge New Mexico State by 10 shots.

“We love playing at beautiful Red Sky and are excited to start the season with two double-digit wins,” head coach Laurie Gibbs said.

Pepperdine’s core of Lion Higo, Kaleiya Romero, Lauren Gomez and Jeneath Wong all finished in the top 12 at Red Sky. KaYee Kwok brought in a T-32 finish. Familiarity is at work in many ways as Pepperdine, which was ranked No. 15 in Golfweek’s preseason rankings, continues to find its way to the top of leaderboards.

A year ago at Red Sky, Gibbs predicted that it could be an exciting year for the Waves. That was before Wong, a talented Australian player, joined the team. She finished in the top 10 four times in the spring.

After winning the West Coast Conference Championship and the NCAA San Antonio Regional, Pepperdine made national championship match play, losing a close quarterfinal match against top-seeded Stanford.

A year ago when Pepperdine won this tournament, the Waves went 18 under to do so. Only UCLA had ever gone lower in event history, reaching 32 under to win in 2018. Next year, the Golfweek Red Sky Challenge field will return to 20 teams, and with the .500 rule debuting in women’s golf, more top-25 teams could find their way to the mountains.

Red Sky is a tricky yet rewarding venue and bared its teeth this week with the help of slick, smooth greens and weather conditions.

“The course was in great shape and greens were rolling at 12.5,” Gibbs said. “The winds picked up mid-round today and hitting greens got to be challenging. Being above the hole on a downhill putt was difficult.”

The challenge makes Alison Gastelum, a New Mexico State senior, like Red Sky that much more. Gastelum won the individual title at 7 under after a final-round 68.

Alison Gastelum, New Mexico State (Golfweek photo)

“Just (where) it is and how it plays is definitely unique in comparison to a lot of other courses,” she said. “It was definitely more challenging this year than I remember too. The greens were fast, very, very fast, but the course was in great conditions too so it was just a matter of your short game to be up there and just making some putts, right?”

Gastelum did the work, making as many birdies – 13 – as any player in the field. Gastelum had competition for the top spot on the leaderboard throughout the day with Madison Holmes of Central Arkansas. Holmes made a hole-in-one on the par-3 ninth on her way to a closing 70, but Gastelum played the back nine in 2 under to overtake her by two shots.

The Golfweek Red Sky Challenge is Gastelum’s first college title. She called it a “dream come true.”

“Making this my first one at the course that I like, just with my teammates and everybody that was around me at this time,” she said.

Way to go @alison_gastelum great job!! Stay hot I need you for the Aggie Open next month!!! @NMStateWGolf @NMStateAggies https://t.co/HwIjD4Oxj5

— Mario Moccia (@MarioMocciaNMSU) September 28, 2023

New Mexico State has already had a busy fall, having traveled to the Golfweek Fall Challenge in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, and the Badger Invitational in Madison, Wisconsin. Gastelum placed fifth on the team in each of those starts as she struggled with her swing and her mental game.

“This is a very challenging sport, especially mentally, and I know how it works,” she said. “I’ve been playing golf since I was 5 years old so I know how it works, I know that sometimes you can have really, really bad rounds and sometimes you can have probably the best rounds of your life.”

Gastelum concentrated on bringing the game she had to Red Sky and credits her win to a better mentality.

After all, it’s tough to be negative against such a beautiful backdrop.

The facilities arms race in college sports just got a jolt.

The Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nevada, announced a $1 billion capital improvements project which includes a new 10,000-seat arena for the University of Nevada Reno’s men’s and women’s basketball teams.

The plans call for a new convention tower and a new hotel with 800 rooms, 300 new residences and upgrades to the resort’s Grand Bay water feature.

And the project includes an aquatic driving range.

“Not in my wildest dreams did I think I could be coaching in an arena and go over for lunch and hit golf balls,” Nevada men’s coach Steve Alford said during the announcement Wednesday in Reno.

Nevada basketball coach Steve Alford jokes, “Not in my wildest dreams did I think I could be coaching in an arena and go over for lunch and hit golf balls. I’ve reached heaven. In a long list of coaching places, I’m in coaching heaven.” pic.twitter.com/eHXEQniCbr

— Nevada Sports Net (@NevadaSportsNet) September 27, 2023

Officially, the details in the press release regarding the driving range with colored targets in the water call for “a comprehensive beautification of Grand Bay into a multi-floor hitting bay with scenic walking path and captivating water show in the current aquatic driving range.”

The Grand Sierra Resort is owned by Alex Meruelo, who counts the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes among his many business ventures.

According to our network partner the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Nevada System of Higher Education, as well as a casino spokeswoman, confirmed that no university funds or taxpayer dollars would be used for the basketball venue’s construction.

No word on an exact opening date for the driving range but the arena will be set to open in the fall of 2026. Christopher Abraham, vice president of marketing, sales and entertainment for the Grand Sierra Resort, told the Reno Gazette-Journal they plan to go after Taylor Swift and Beyoncé to hold concerts there.

Gary Woodland, who had surgery Monday to remove tumors in his brain, will have his name grace the golf complex at his alma mater.

The University of Kansas made the announcement Wednesday to rename its complex of golf practice facilities in west Lawrence after the former Jayhawk, winner of the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

The Kansas Board of Regents signed off on the request from KU. Woodland’s name will be on the “conglomeration of practice holes, driving range and putting facilities that the men and women’s golf teams use as the Gary Woodland Golf Complex. The facilities are located at the privately owned country club The Jayhawk Club north of Clinton Parkway and Crossgate Drive in west Lawrence,” according to the KU website.

Woodland, who grew up in Topeka and has a home in Lawrence, graduated from KU in 2007 and has four PGA Tour victories.

“He has been incredibly supportive of the golf program,” Chancellor Douglas Girod said.

Woodland decided on the brain surgery after other treatment methods had not been effective.

“After a long surgery today, the majority of the tumor has been removed and he is currently resting,” the PGA Tour reported on its website earlier this week.

Let’s face it: it has been hard to follow college golf in the first two weeks of the season.

With the myriad issues Spikemark has faced providing scoring for college golf, numerous tournaments and schools have been forced to find other ways to keep track of their tournaments and provide live scoring. Some have used Golfstat and Golf Genius. However, the issues Spikemark has faced have made it difficult for coaches, players, parents, fans and more to simply follow the sport.

However, that doesn’t take away from what has been an incredible start to the year.

For the first time, a woman shot 60 in a tournament. A team won its first tournament in Division I. And much, much more.

Here are some storylines you may have missed from the start of the 2023-24 college golf season.

LAKE ELMO, Minn. — Kiara Romero stood next to her coach, Derek Radley, on the side of the 18th green.

The freshman at Oregon just walked in a birdie putt on the final hole of her first college tournament. She had no idea where it put her on the leaderboard, but everyone else did.

It gave her a share of the lead.

Radley whispered to Romero that she had won. She threw her hands over her mouth as tears filled her eyes.

Romero was one of four who shared medalists honors Wednesday after the final round of the 2023 Annika Intercollegiate at Royal Golf Club. She, along with South Carolina’s Louise Rydqvist, Duke’s Phoebe Brinker and Florida State’s Lottie Woad all finished at 8-under 208 for the tournament, a grand start to the year at one of the deepest events in women’s college golf.

Oregon freshman Kiara Romero birdies her final hole to move to 8 under, which will give her a tie for medalist honors in her first tournament. South Carolina will win the team title #ANNIKAInter pic.twitter.com/jgDbjgQgxh

— Cameron Jourdan (@Cam_Jourdan) September 13, 2023

“I thought I was going to have to make an eagle on the last hole to get the win,” Romero said. “I just wanted to make birdie so I could be in the top three or something.”

However, the birdie was good enough to earn Romero, the 2023 U.S. Girls’ Junior champion, a college win in her first start.

It was also the first win for Rydqvist, a junior who had a 4-foot putt for birdie on 18 to win outright, but it slid by. Nevertheless, she’s not going home empty handed, as South Carolina won the team title at 26 under, beating Oregon by three strokes and defending event champion and national champion Wake Forest by four.

Rydqvist also earned a coveted exemption into the inaugural The Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican taking place Nov. 6-12 at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Florida. One player from the winning team earned a spot in the field, and Gamecocks’ coach Kalen Anderson chose Rydqvist, from Sweden, for the honor.

South Carolina’s Louise Rydqvist earned an exemption to the 2023 The Annika after her team won the 2023 Annika Intercollegiate. (Photo: Ben Adelberg/The Back of the Range)

“I think I need a minute because it hasn’t sunk in yet,” Rydqvist said. “It feels absolutely incredible. I can’t wait to get down there.”

The Annika, an official LPGA event, will offer a $3.25 million purse, one of the largest outside of the majors. Proceeds from the tournament will benefit the Annika Foundation.

Each of the four medalists shot 2-under 70s in the final round. Wake Forest’s Mimi Rhodes and South Carolina’s Maylis Lamoure, who were the 36-hole leaders, both missed birdie putts on the final hole to join the winners and finished at even-par 72.

For Woad, a sophomore, it’s the third win of her collegiate career. Brinker, a senior, won for the second time, including a win at the 2022 ACC Championship. She finished fourth last year at the Annika Intercollegiate and lost in a playoff at the Ruth’s Chris Tar Heel Invite in the spring.

The four co-medalists of the 2023 Annika Intercollegiate, from L-R: South Carolina’s Louise Rydqvist, Duke’s Phoebe Brinker, Florida State’s Lottie Woad and Oregon’s Kiara Romero. (Photo: Ben Adelberg/The Back of the Range)

Meanwhile, South Carolina had a lead as big as 10 shots early in the final round, but it also shrunk to as small as one on the back nine. Two-time first-team All-American Hannah Darling and freshman Vairana Heck each made pivotal birdies down the stretch, as well as Rydqvist and Lamoure, to help South Carolina pull back away.

It’s the third time South Carolina has won the Annika Intercollegiate.

“It was awesome, what a great way to start the season,” Anderson said. “We had a really great qualifier, and it’s nice to see them come out and play great golf.”

Heck shot 4-under 68 on Wednesday, which tied the low round of the day, and finished T-9. Darling finished 17th at 3 under.

Thanks to a pair of 18th-hole eagles from Briana Chacon and Minori Nagano, Oregon moved into second place past defending champ Wake Forest. Freshman Macy Pate finished T-9 at 6 under for the Demon Deacons while Carol Chacarra tied for 15th at 5 under.

Chacon, Lamoure, Rhodes and Texas freshman Farah O’Keefe finished runner-up at 7 under.

So much was familiar in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, this week. North Carolina-Wilmington often starts its season this way – by making the drive a couple hours south down the coast to the Golfweek Fall Challenge at Caledonia Golf Club.

“This is the type of grass we play in, this is a very similar style golf course that we might face here,” said head coach Cindy Ho. “I love staying in the villas because it’s a great first team bonding kind of situation where especially if I had new players, they get to know each other.”

Not much getting-to-know-each-other is required for this UNCW team, which features several players from last season, so there’s familiarity in that respect too.

The week only diverged from familiar after Mallory Fobes holed the final putt on Caledonia’s daunting finishing hole, featuring a tight landing zone off the tee and an approach over water. When Fobes made bogey there to cap off a closing 69, it left UNCW a shot ahead of Lipscomb, with their first victory in the Golfweek Fall Challenge after four appearances.

Scoring: Golfweek Fall Challenge

“It was an incredible battle,” Ho said of a final-round horserace with Lipscomb. “At this time of year, you’re learning about your kids, you can’t simulate pressure but this is how you make it real. . . . Trying to compete, trying to win under that kind of pressure, pulling off shots – especially finishing on 18. Eighteen has had our number.”

On Tuesday, by the time UNCW – playing in the final groups with Lipscomb and Charleston Southern – approached the final hole, there were several groups stacked on the tee. Most of Ho’s players draw the ball, which means they can’t hit driver off the tee at that 377-yard par 4. That set up many more decisions down the hole, like where to aim on the approach and how much the wind would affect both line and club choice.

UNCW ended up playing the hole, the toughest for the field, in 1 over.

Ho jokes that checking Golfstat constantly during a round is too much for her blood pressure, but on the final day at Caledonia, a comment from Lipscomb head coach Shannon O’Brien about how well UNCW was playing led Ho to open up live scoring anyway.

It’s just not No. 18 that’s a challenge at Caledonia, but also the three holes leading up to it. Ho was proud of the way that her players rose to the occasion, especially fifth-year senior Fobes and redshirt sophomore Victoria Levy, who finished 1-2 on the individual leaderboard. Fobes was 4 under for the week and Levy, along with New Mexico State’s Emma Bunch, was 2 under.

Fobes is playing her COVID year, and Ho can’t think of a better way for it to start than with an individual title – the first of her career. It’s fitting for a player who owns many of UNCW’s program scoring records to now own some hardware.

“I’m just so proud of her, I’m so happy for her that she’s done so much work on her game,” Ho said. “You do so much work and you hope but you can’t control anybody else’s game. You can’t control your opponents in golf. The only thing you can control is your game, your emotions, how you react to it. She did the work and she was rewarded for it this time.”

Levy also shined as the coach’s pick in the lineup. Levy has had pneumonia and bronchitis almost from the moment she stepped on campus this fall and as a result has hit very few shots leading up to the first tournament. Coming down the stretch on Tuesday, she had a chip-in eagle on No. 15 then birdied No. 16 with a downhill, curling left-to-right foot putt to an unfamiliar right hole location.

Annika Saidleman, playing in the No. 3 position to start the week, brought in a final-round 72 and finished T-28 individually. Saidleman wasn’t in the UNCW lineup last year but was part of the team.

As Ho said, it takes everyone to win over three days.

“This group is really close, and I love that for them,” Ho said, noting how hard they celebrated Fobes’ individual win at the end of the day. “They’re genuinely happy for a person that won, not just about themselves, whether they played good or bad.”

Jason D’Amore is a stats and numbers guy. Still, few rounds send him to the record books for motivation.

After his Loyola Marymount team went 17 under in the opening round of the Golfweek Fall Challenge at True Blue Golf Club on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, D’Amore decided to do a little digging. Knowing it’s sometimes hard to follow up a really good round, D’Amore decided to search for team and individual records to change the narrative.

“I just threw some numbers at them and had them more along the lines of hey, let’s go break some records and shoot these numbers versus being in first or second or third place,” D’Amore said. “We can’t control what the other teams are going to do but we know what we’re capable of. We set some goals for ourselves each day that were more based upon us than anyone else.”

The shift worked, as Loyola Marymount played the following 36 holes in 30 under and won the team title by a shot over Washington State on Sept. 12. The Lions landed three players inside the top 7 while individual medalist honors went to Washington State’s Pono Yanagi and Arkansas State’s Thomas Schmidt, who both finished at 17 under.

Scoring: Golfweek Fall Challenge

College golf may be an individual sport, but D’Amore knows that, for better or worse, players feed off each other. At True Blue, the Lions kept the goal-setting focused on themselves, letting the chips fall around them.

In the history of the Golfweek Fall Challenge, only four teams have gone below 30 under for 54 holes at True Blue. Campbell set the scoring record of 48 under when it won in 2018 and won by 34 over second-place Jacksonville State & Stephen F. Austin. The individual record remains with Jacksonville State alum Tomas Anderson, whose 19-under total in 2014 included a final-round 60.

How does a team go 47 under? D’Amore makes a case for consistency more than fireworks. Loyola Marymount counted at least three scores in the 60s in each round and never counted anything higher than 72. Inviting conditions also played a role, he noted.

“The greens were soft, the ball was going far, there wasn’t a lot of wind,” D’Amore said. “It was just kind of one of those perfect recipes where you got some guys that could play some good golf and the golf course really just didn’t have a ton of defense because of the conditions.”

Loyola Marymount was two shots off the lead entering the final round and was paired with Washington State and Western Carolina on the last day. All three teams fed off each other with birdies flying.

As his team approached the final four holes, D’Amore texted his assistant coach Michael McCabe that he thought his team would need to reach 55 under to come out ahead of Washington State.

The closing gauntlet backed everyone up.

“Once we got to 16, 17, 18 it was a lot of playing telephone and trying to figure out where we were,” D’Amore said.

D’Amore and McCabe tried to gather as much intel as they could in the final holes and help their players make the best decisions possible. In the end, they edged Washington State by one shot. D’Amore was proud of the way his players remained in the present to finish the job.

A win in the first tournament out has the effect of creating a platform on which a team can build the rest of the season. The Lions last won a team title in the spring of 2021, when they won two tournaments back-to-back.

“One of the guys said something about, this makes the 5:30 a.m. wakeup calls for workouts worth it,” D’Amore said. “My response was it does, but it also makes you excited for the next 5:30 a.m. workout because you know that those days are what leads to winning a championship and having a chance to win.”

When you’ve got this kind of momentum, D’Amore notes, you don’t want much time off. Loyola Marymount was headed back home to Los Angeles after the True Blue title only to head north to San Francisco in another four days to play the USF/Howard Intercollegiate at TPC Harding Park.

“If we didn’t play great this week,” he said, “we’d be hoping we had awhile but since we played well, it will be nice to get going again.”

No rest for the winners.