NCAA Women's Regional cancelled, course "not playable at a championship level"?

[Jeff Schley]

This is just bat xxxx crazy. Never heard of such a thing. Isn't the rule play the ball and the course as you find it yes? Had to be other factors as there was some standing water, but not on the greens apparently. Saying it is playable, but not to a championship level is like saying it is raining today, let's cancel the football game. Elements and weather are part of sports, I don't think I'm alone in that, but what are your thoughts?

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/31435211/ncaa-women-golf-regional-baton-rouge-canceled-sparking-outcry

[Cal Seifert]

What a shame for all those athletes and all the preparations they took to end like this. Especially after dealing with a season during a pandemic. NCAA decision making once again looks like fools.

[Jay Mickle]

Certainly agree. But it does happen. I was in London years ago and with my son had just gotten scalper tickets for a Chelsea/Arsenal match and arrived at the stadium and was told that the game was being postponed due to a “wet pitch”. it was London everything is always wet!!, A couple of miles down the road Wimbledon was playing. Terribly disappointed.

[David_Tepper]

More here:

https://www.geoffshackelford.com/homepage/2021/5/12/baton-rouge-womens-regional-cancelled

[Buck Wolter]

Certainly agree. But it does happen. I was in London years ago and with my son had just gotten scalper tickets for a Chelsea/Arsenal match and arrived at the stadium and was told that the game was being postponed due to a “wet pitch”. it was London everything is always wet!!, A couple of miles down the road Wimbledon was playing. Terribly disappointed.

That's not what happened here -- there are shots of the LSU Men's team teeing off on the course to practice while they didn't allow the Women to play. Smell's like home cooking as LSU automatically advanced.

[Steve Lang]

   It was a big red radar blob and tail of a front that passed thru the other day... luckily most missing Houston which is a weather day west of Baton Rouge... i can certainly see it not ideal, saturated, standing water is no fun, i can imagine shoes being sucked off feet in muddy areas, BUT if they wanted to limit damage, really, competition or no competition, that's life gang, get over it.     

[Buck Wolter]

  It was a big red radar blob and tail of a front that passed thru the other day... luckily most missing Houston which is a weather day west of Baton Rouge... i can certainly see it not ideal, saturated, standing water is no fun, i can imagine shoes being sucked off feet in muddy areas, BUT if they wanted to limit damage, really, competition or no competition, that's life gang, get over it.   

The NCAA dweeb said the course was playable but not at a 'championship level' when he told the women waiting to play to fulfill their lifelong dream that there would be no event but they should probably just get over it.

[Jeff_Brauer]

And I get taken to task here for how much engineering thought I put into the drainage, LOL.  Just a punctuation or spelling error according to some.


I don't know how well engineered the course in question is/was.  I do know that I use bigger pipes in rainy climates than I might use in deserts, LOL, while many gca's figure a bunch of 4 and 6 inch pipes is "enough."  I size them according to a design storm and in each watershed to make sure the entire course drains at the same rate (unless adjacent to a river, which may control drainage time)  After all, having 15 holes available isn't really enough.


In truth, even the best drainage engineering is a compromise on golf courses, since It's not usually a "health, safety, and welfare" issue, nor is it economically feasible to put in pipes to handle a 100 or even 50 year storm.  The economic equation usually works out to draining an average storm in a day, to minimize play loss, and that might be 1" an hour, probably less. 


If I was consulting or designing a course with tournament aspirations, it might be a consideration to upsize the drainage just to reduce the chances that their one big event every X years wouldn't be washed out like this, but there is always a chance that storms coincide with big events, so no one would guarantee it couldn't happen.

[V. Kmetz]

Where I'm with the OP sentiments, and those agreeing...
1. The bigger failure of the authority is to not have a backup plan... a shortened tourney, a regional alternate course, a pre-thought to postponement and ripple effects. To outright cancel golf at something caused by nature, means cancellation is always on the table in a prominent position


2. Whether or not the call was merited by any reasonable standards by which you or I would make it, the introducing/announcement of this new standard...playable to championship playable, is a bad, bad mistake; it's newly-minted, strained, and inscrutable and as such erodes an authority even further.


Where I'm unsure...
3. The NCAA, this host great golf conference and school, the super and staff did not want this, just like they didn't want CoVid either.  I know first hand that maximum pains are taken to execute events, even in compromising conditions, and I'm not going to dismiss out of hand, such a step as completely unwarranted...


4. Though who knows how and what the local staff participated in this decision, I wish there was a forum where I could hear from the super, the course pro, some regular LSU course players, the coach, the ADs... what inputs into this decision were made on that end.  While 7 inches in 3 days is fairly extraordinary, it is La. and my cultural recognition is that that part of the country receives flooding rains more often than a lot of places... are more raisn expected on top of what's there?


5. As a board aside, will this cancellation cause the LSU course to undergo a massive drainage/irrigation/re-grassing program?


Where I'm not going.
6. The "dreams crushed" narrative is overblown and weak. I might buy it for a Div II or III senior, for whom such a tournament was/is TRULY the culminating event of their competitive golf career. For so many of those, it IS the last time their scores are reported in the paper and people can make a fuss for and about them or provide them service to play their golf.  That's a disappointment worth avoiding.  But that it not the case with these young golfers, who to be where they are, means they've played perhaps 100 or more tournaments... college, high school, local amateurs, juniors, club events. If you along the way ask them if any tournament is cancelled, their disappointment is likely couched in these same terms: "I've been working for this all my life."... For them, this cancelation is not the last day of their competitive golf career


7. Moreover, I'm not taking the frustration of a junior in college, as some "life-defeat," replete with her provenance "In 18 years of golf, I've never seen..."  Whoa! What? Young lady, you're 20-21 years old... to be playing golf for 18 years means you're counting your mature experiences as starting when you're 3, and it also means you're broadcasting you've played a lot of golf, had a lot of days in the sun, had a lot of people devoting their time and energy to setting your "life's-work" up... season some and get back to us....


8.  Accordingly her "phone pic" evidence and reporting of just how reasonably playable the course was or isn't carries very little weight as to discovering why this happened, and more importantly, how it might be avoided in the future...

[Buck Wolter]

Where I'm not going.
6. The "dreams crushed" narrative is overblown and weak. I might buy it for a Div II or III senior, for whom such a tournament was/is TRULY the culminating event of their competitive golf career. For so many of those, it IS the last time their scores are reported in the paper and people can make a fuss for and about them or provide them service to play their golf.  That's a disappointment worth avoiding.  But that it not the case with these young golfers, who to be where they are, means they've played perhaps 100 or more tournaments... college, high school, local amateurs, juniors, club events. If you along the way ask them if any tournament is cancelled, their disappointment is likely couched in these same terms: "I've been working for this all my life."... For them, this cancelation is not the last day of their competitive golf career

I think you're missing the team aspect of this competition. I was never an NCAA athlete but I've seen what basketball teams look like when they get their conferences 1 auto bid in tournament,  I don't see why these women would be any different.

[Matt_Cohn]

The absence of maintenance crew or pumps, as reported by several players and coaches, is a problem. Whether or not they half-assed their efforts because it was a women’s tournament, it looks like they half-assed their efforts because it was a women’s tournament, and we know it wouldn’t be the first time the NCAA did that. That’s not good.

[Kalen Braley]

The absence of maintenance crew or pumps, as reported by several players and coaches, is a problem. Whether or not they half-assed their efforts because it was a women’s tournament, it looks like they half-assed their efforts because it was a women’s tournament, and we know it wouldn’t be the first time the NCAA did that. That’s not good.

Matt,

I tend to agree here, just a couple of months ago this happened at the Women's NCAA tournament.  Safe to say not a fan of the NCAA on several levels.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/women-ncaa-tournament-allege-weight-room-disparities-n1261600

[V. Kmetz]

I think you're missing the team aspect of this competition. I was never an NCAA athlete but I've seen what basketball teams look like when they get their conferences 1 auto bid in tournament,  I don't see why these women would be any different.

1'm not saying there isn't and can't be disappointment, even anger, if the NCAA and the staff bungled to this result, but the dreams crushed narrative is not meaningful. This is not the first or last "team" competition for this group. They've been fairly blessed and this grouping of accomplished players have spent their tender young lives touched by the regular playing of golf. No one is crushing their dreams, most are trying to make lemonade out of a rain lemon.

[Buck Wolter]

I think you're missing the team aspect of this competition. I was never an NCAA athlete but I've seen what basketball teams look like when they get their conferences 1 auto bid in tournament,  I don't see why these women would be any different.

1'm not saying there isn't and can't be disappointment, even anger, if the NCAA and the staff bungled to this result, but the dreams crushed narrative is not meaningful. This is not the first or last "team" competition for this group. They've been fairly blessed and this grouping of accomplished players have spent their tender young lives touched by the regular playing of golf. No one is crushing their dreams, most are trying to make lemonade out of a rain lemon.

We'll disagree on who gets to decide if that was a dream that was crushed or if they only have the right to feel disappointed given their obvious privilege.


Love or hate them but Barstool Sports has invited all the mildly disappointed teams to Arizona  to play for their own Championship -- well done.

[Pete_Pittock]

IIWIC LSU wouldn't host future NCAA golf tournaments. They're snowflakes. I've been at countless tournaments in Oregon when golf was played, but the course wasn't in championship condition. I should point out that my alma mater is Oregon State and our women's (sic?) team was the 7th seed at the tournament.

[David Royer]

I just finished yesterday working all three days at the Columbus regional.  The conditions were less than ideal.  On Monday we had two hour delay to let the course recover from the previous day's rain of over on inch.  The temps were very cold with wind.  All three days were windy and cold.  Cold enough for winter jackets and gloves.  The women demonstrated the very best in how they handled the adverse conditions.  They played hard and played well.  The quality of golf and sportsmanship was at the highest level.  I can't speak to the Baton Rouge situation.  However that said, the women at that site deserved nothing less than a herculean effort.  Anything less is not worthy of we expect from tournament leadership.   Please enjoy the finals.  These women are worthy of our attention. 

[Mike Sweeney]

Love or hate them but Barstool Sports has invited all the mildly disappointed teams to Arizona  to play for their own Championship -- well done.

That is awesome!

[Jason Topp]

I would like to hear the other side of this. 

[mike_beene]

My alma mater was the 3 seed. They could have come to Waco or to Dallas in an hour and played any number of places in great weather with abundant hotel rooms since no conventions.If my little school makes 200 million in athletics, and the sec schools make much more, seems easily doable.

[Buck Wolter]

Love or hate them but Barstool Sports has invited all the mildly disappointed teams to Arizona  to play for their own Championship -- well done.

That is awesome!

It's a go -- evidently the NCAA has signed off. The Let Them Play Classic will be at Whirlwind Golf Club next Thursday and Friday.

[Buck Wolter]

I would like to hear the other side of this.

When you're guilty the usual advice is to stay quiet. My guess is this is all we hear.


https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/statement-division-i-women-s-golf-committee-baton-rouge-regional

[Pete_Pittock]

and LSU will host NCAA softball regional in Baton Rouge. Thoughts and prayers.

[Mike Sweeney]

Love or hate them but Barstool Sports has invited all the mildly disappointed teams to Arizona  to play for their own Championship -- well done.

That is awesome!

It's a go -- evidently the NCAA has signed off. The Let Them Play Classic will be at Whirlwind Golf Club next Thursday and Friday.

When I saw you post "Whirlwind GC", I thought you were kidding. Truly brilliant stuff here on many levels -


https://www.troon.com/press-releases/whirlwind-golf-club-to-host-the-let-them-play-classic/