When Texas A&M’s Bronson Burgoon nearly sank his second shot at the famed 18th hole at the Inverness Club last Saturday, it made a Division I Men’s Golf Committee recommendation from two years ago look good.

That’s when the committee advocated changing its customary four-round, stroke-play format for determining a golf team champion. The committee pushed for a change to three rounds of stroke play for seeding purposes, followed by a three-round, match-play tournament among the top eight seeds.

It was a dramatic change, to be sure, but it produced drama at this year’s finals when Texas A&M and Arkansas – two golf teams overshadowed by regular-season goliaths Oklahoma State and Georgia – ended up battling for the team trophy. The final pairing – Burgoon versus Arkansas’ Andrew Landry – were the deciding factor in a match that was 2-2 to that point. Burgoon seemed to be in command until Landry won holes 14 through 17 to square the match. On the 18th, Landry was well-positioned in the  fairway while Burgoon was stuck in the rough.

That’s when magic took over. Burgoon hit a pitching wedge within 3 inches of the hole, and the Aggies won their first national title in golf.

Division I Men’s Golf Committee Chair Darin Spease, a senior associate athletics director at Charlotte, talked with The NCAA News about the benefits of the new format and why match play is appropriate for Division I men’s golf.

NCAA News: What was the impetus behind the change, and did the committee receive any pushback when the recommendation was made?

Darin Spease: Actually, the committee was spurred along by the desire of coaches to see this happen. The Golf Coaches Association advisory board pushed for this concept of match play. It was fairly universally endorsed at the time, and if anyone didn’t believe it was a great format before, I would be surprised if they walked away from Inverness thinking it wasn’t a great format now. Now it may not always be this dramatic – sometimes we’ll get the finals match that ends on the 14th hole, or we may have the first three players from a team win their matches and render the other two on the course inconsequential. But the moral of the story is that given the way it did end this year, it is certainly worth having made the change.

NCAA News: Did the format change accomplish what the committee wanted?

Spease: It was everything we hoped to have. You always dream about having that final match that gets down to the 18th green. We had that happen twice. Not only in the final match between Texas A&M and Arkansas, but in the quarterfinal round we had what a lot of people would have considered a finals match with Oklahoma State and Georgia. Both of those teams had sterling regular seasons, and Oklahoma State entered match play as the top seed after having won the three-round stroke play by 13 shots. Georgia, though, by virtue of its performance in the third round, dropped to the No. 8 seed. Thus, we got our dream match-up in the quarterfinals, and it did not disappoint. I think if you talk to either Mike McGraw (Oklahoma State coach) or Chris Haack (Georgia coach), they would both tell you that it was compelling and fascinating and everything we thought it would be. Golfers from all eight teams genuinely felt like they were in a championship environment.

NCAA News: Ironically, Oklahoma State, whose AD and legendary former golf coach Mike Holder chaired the committee when the proposal was made, was the hard-luck victim of the new format after establishing a commanding 13-shot lead over the field in three rounds of stroke play, only to lose in the quarterfinals to a tough Georgia squad that the Cowboys probably didn’t expect to see until the final match. Any hard feelings there?

Spease: In this case we had a team get out to a big lead after three rounds. Naturally you’d feel like there would be some disappointment of not being able to carry that over. But that’s the nature of match play – it’s like a reset. That’s the way it works in the U.S. and British Amateurs. You can win the stroke-play portion and then lose to the 64th-ranked player in the first round of match play. Those kinds of things happen. You truly reset the bar and those eight teams slug it out. The best team over the weekend won. The teams in the finals did everything they needed to survive and advance, much like in the Division I men’s basketball tournament. The higher seed or the team that appears to be favored based on its season performance doesn’t always win a particular tournament game or, in this case, match.

NCAA News: How did the golfers like it?

Spease: I was standing on the 18th hole with a couple of the Arkansas golfers and one of them said to me, “I can’t breathe.” Think about that. He’s not even playing at this point, but he’s following his teammate who has made this huge comeback, and now it’s at the point where his guy is in the fairway while his opponent is on the hill in the rough. The Arkansas guys are thinking, “We may do the impossible here,” like the 15-point comeback in the last two minutes of a basketball game. And they just about pulled it off until Burgoon hits the storybook shot everyone dreams about.

I didn’t hear from a single player who thought that format was anything but the right one. I heard one story in fact that epitomized the whole thing. Rickie Fowler, the Oklahoma State golfer who was very emotional after his team’s loss in the quarters – and like the championship player he is, he was kind of putting it on his back. He certainly didn’t play poorly. On the contrary, he went birdie-par-par down the stretch and got beat by an opponent (Georgia’s Brian Harman) who went birdie-birdie-birdie. But then during the same interview, Fowler is saying it was the most fun he’d had in his life playing college golf. That’s what this tournament was all about.

Most of these guys have played in amateur tournaments. They know how match play goes. It’s not reinventing the wheel for them. No one walked away not feeling they were part of something really special.

NCAA News: Spectators and other casual followers of golf in general often struggled to understand the college championship format in which five golfers would play but only four would count toward a team’s score in a given round. Is the match-play format easier to follow?

Spease: Absolutely. Match play is simple. You’re literally playing the guy next to you. The five/count-four format is hard to understand if you don’t regularly follow college golf. If you’re watching on TV and you see a player from your team make a birdie, you expect the score to change. But if that player is 8-over par and currently the noncounter on that team, he may birdie the next three holes without changing the standings. That’s hard for some people to grasp. But match play is something people who’ve watched the Ryder Cup and the President’s Cup understand. And from a player’s standpoint, if you excel from that head-to-head competition with an opponent, then match play obviously is for you, and schools will actively be recruiting these types of players in the future. Some players are just better at the mentality of “beating my guy” versus wondering if they’re even going to be a counter for the team.

NCAA News: It was quite a coincidence for the new format to debut on such a famous course (the Inverness Club). How did that contribute to the experience?

Spease: Inverness certainly is a famous course. There have been some memorable shots at the 18th green, such as Bob Tway holing out to beat Greg Norman in the PGA. Now Texas A&M has added to the Inverness lore. We had great crowds, and there was a British Open sort of feel to the final hole where the crowd was following the players up the fairway. While the crowds weren’t as large obviously as the Open, it still had that kind of feel to the experience. Everyone was hanging on every shot.

NCAA News: Any changes planned for next year?

Spease: Next year, we will extend the tournament to six days – three days of stroke play and three days for match play instead of the two this year. This year we conducted the match-play quarterfinals and semifinals on the same day but next year we’ll require those teams to play just 18 holes per day. While having to play two rounds in one day during a match-play format isn’t too terribly difficult – college players are accustomed to playing 36 holes in one day as it is – we want to provide the best championship experience we can.

NCAA News: Does the new format position the championship for broader television coverage?

Spease:  It’s probably too early to tell whether television will be attracted to this. We hope we can evolve the tournament to the point that the Golf Channel or another network will be receptive to broadcasting the finals, but that will require some resources – either through sponsorships that have an NCAA angle to them or a venue that decides to add TV as part of the experience. Golf isn’t a cheap sport to televise. It’s much more than just having two stationary cameras at courtside that go back and forth. You need a lot of cameras and people on the course to operate them. I think someday we will see television be a big part of this championship.