With Alabama likely on the outside of NCAA men’s golf tourney, school announces it can’t host regional

Tuscaloosa’s Ol’ Colony Golf Complex will not host an NCAA men’s golf regional as scheduled, The Tuscaloosa News has learned.

John Gray, director of golf at Ol’ Colony, confirmed that the scheduled May 15-18 event will not take place at the course. He referred all questions to the University of Alabama, which had been listed as the host institution for the event on the NCAA website.

UA informed the NCAA earlier this month that it could not host the event because necessary work to get the course ready was not able to be completed in time. According to a release from the NCAA, the “course was on schedule to host, but a late freeze, followed by cooler temperatures and excessive rainfall prevented necessary corrections to the course and stalled other maintenance projects.”

The field for the NCAA regionals will be announced May 4. Alabama, which finished last at the SEC Championships that concluded April 22, is not expected to be in the field.

Tuscaloosa was scheduled to host one of six NCAA regionals, joining College Station, Texas; Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; New Haven, Connecticut; Stockton, California; and Columbus, Ohio. Texas A&M, Florida Atlantic, Yale, Pacific and Ohio State are the other host institutions.

Jimmie Austin Golf Club at the University of Oklahoma will now take Ol’ Colony’s place, the NCAA announced Thursday evening. The course played host previously to five combined men’s and women’s NCAA Division I regional championships, hosting in 1998 (men), 2012 (men), 2013 (women), 2018 (men) and 2019 (women). The course also hosted the 1997 Oklahoma State Amateur, the 1998 and 2010 Big 12 Conference Women’s Championships, and U.S. Amateur Public Links Championships in 2009 and 2012.

“While this was a difficult situation for the committee to address in late April, the Jimmie Austin Golf Club is ready to host immediately and has a championship pedigree that will provide a great championship experience for our teams,” Connie Hurlbut, chair of the Division I Men’s Golf Committee and senior associate commissioner and senior woman administrator at the West Coast Conference, said in a release. “The committee also felt that Oklahoma, as the top ranked team in the country, earned the right to serve as the replacement host.”