Shivas,
Far be it for me to argue with a bona fide former Division I golfer, but to add to what JESS II posted, we had a similar experience with the golf coach at the University of Texas. He would not even talk to my son about trying out for the team. According to one of his assistants (who eventually answered one of my son's many calls), the coach had eight players on scholarship. All were selected on the basis of AJGA, USGA, and other national tournament experience. The golf program did not seek walk-ons, and designed the qualification competition accordingly: a 72-hole four day process beginning at noon on the first four days of school on four munis to be named just prior to the first round. Shoot par from the tips and you're in. The fact of the matter is that probably only one or two of the scholarship players may have qualified under this process. But what really stunk with this system is that the golf program was basically requiring its serious potential student-athletes to miss classes at a most critical time in their college careers.
Given the options, my son chose wisely and passed on the opportunity. The coach didn't have to mess with another evaluation of talent to better the team. Apparently, there must be some method to the madness- using the national junior tournament process almost exclusively as a feeder system- as both the coach and the school's golf program appear to be doing okay. We'll never know how my son't life and college experience may have been enriched had he been afforded the opportunity to compete for a spot on a more objective basis, but, on the other hand, we never had any delusions that college athletics was about the student athlete as opposed to the college and the staffs of the athletic department.