In the NCAA system, there are three divisions - one to three, with one being the best and most prestigious. D1 universities produce the overwhelming majority of professional golfers and are able to offer greater opportunities to players earlier due to generally having significantly larger budgets compared to the rest.
As a result, they require extremely dedicated people with immense talent as they strive to fight for the highest-ranking national title each season, the NCAA Division 1 Golf Championship. The competition is usually extremely competitive and consistent in D1 as that is where most of the best players are spending their college life.
This has not always been the case, though, especially on the women's side of the game where - up until about 2010 - only a select handful of colleges ever won the national championship.
Of the past eight NCAA D1 Women's Golf Championships (2016-2024), seven different teams have tasted glory. The same number of winners occurred between 2009 and 1989. In contrast, only two male golf programs have won back-to-back titles since the mid 1980s with a different champion in each of the past 10 editions.
In women's college golf, the whole system continues to move closer together - both in terms of personnel and facilities - after schools which had not historically operated big-hitting golf programs began channelling money away from lucrative football and basketball operations.
Explaining how the landscape has changed for the better, the University of Southern California women's golf head coach, Justin Silverstein, said: "I would say about 10 to 15 years ago, the top-10 teams were getting... let's say 90% of the best players. They had six scholarships, most of these schools, and had six elite players on the roster.
"A change in the past five to 10 years is these players started spreading out as schools invested in facilities and programs. You started to see programs that were anywhere from 11 to 40 in the power four conferences - which got this influx of football money - spending it on golf facilities, golf courses, practice areas, indoor areas and cold weather schools, better travel which enables you to play a better tournament schedule, more recruiting money, so you can go to Europe and try to get players to come over. You can go to Asia and try to get players to come over.
"So the good part - in a way, because it's made it harder to win - is that we have this bigger pot of schools that can win a national championship or compete at a high level now. So the top 10, 15, 20% of players have spread out a little bit.
"The difference between the top end of D1 and the rest is the talent, still, but then you've got to find a differentiator for those top-end players. So, I think when the influx of football money did come in and facilities got ramped up, things got better in the college golf landscape because you didn't just see the same, especially on the women's side, the same five, six, seven teams playing for a national championship every year."
Meanwhile, D2 universities - while still competing for a national championship each year - offer a more well-rounded program with equal emphasis on academic studies and sport. Expectations are lower, the pressure on training is not quite as intense, and the competition can be a little more inconsistent.
Explaining how high expectations are set to win at a top-level D1 school like Arizona State University, the Sun Devil's men's golf associate head coach, Thomas Sutton shared how even finishing as a runner-up is not good enough.
He said: "When you're at ASU, your expectations are this high. We came in second a couple years ago and I still haven't gotten a 'congratulations.' That's the level. It's like 'You lost in the finals? Maybe next year.'
"If you don't perform at a top level as a player or as a coach, they're going to find someone else. It's very... I don't want to say cutthroat because we are a family. We take the pressure off. We have a lot of fun.
"But everybody that comes here, the coaches and the players included are super competitive and they want to win. That’s why they came. They want to be the best at whatever they do."
It is very rare for a successful pro golfer - especially on the PGA Tour or LPGA Tour - to attend a D2 school for all four years of their college life, with eight-time PGA Tour winner Lee Janzen, six-time champion Rocco Mediate and four-time DP World Tour winner Jeev Milkha Singh some of the exceptions.
If their play is good enough, student-athletes can be recruited by D1 schools and transfer midway through. This occasionally occurs and is a path travelled by the likes of Xander Schauffele and DP World Tour pro, Dan Bradbury, although it is not all that common for golfers who go on to make it into the world's top-50.
For D1 schools who want to pride themselves on competing for NCAA titles every year, getting recruitment right in the first place is a must. According to Next College Student Athlete (NCSA), many D1 schools will not even look at a player with a scoring average of above 72 in high school or junior college while that number rises to 74 for D2 programs.
Sutton explained: "If you're a player and you come in and you're not good, you're probably not going to be here for four years. We bring in our guys and if they don't play their first two years, they're probably not ever going to play.
"It's probably like that in all sports, but in college golf, you only get five guys to go out there, and if we don't have the two or three of the best players in the world on our team, then we need to make sure we go find them or develop our current guys into being them."
In terms of where they compete, the very best D1 golf programs will take a team to each of the 12 best college events every season. Due to college golf's '500 Rule', universities still have to win more than half of their matches to make the post-season, and it is tougher to do that with more fierce competition. But they generally have excellent rosters so still find a way to do it.
Moving further down Division 1, schools might enter half of the top-end tournaments and then play in half a dozen events with weaker fields to ensure they maintain their positive winning record.
There are also only so many spots at these events, so if the likely contenders for the National Championship are already in based on their higher ranking, it leaves some low-end D1 colleges looking elsewhere for competitive appearances.
D2 has its own schedule - separate from D1 - which forms the calendar those universities can choose from, with the same kinds of rules and restrictions applying.
Another key difference between D1 and D2 college golf pertains to funding. Top D1 universities operate more like professional teams with no stone left unturned in their pursuit for glory.
They have the most up-to-date training facilities and almost every request is met with a 'yes' in order to give their athletes the best possible chance of success. As to be expected, the quality of facilities and amount of funding golf programs receive usually slides away the further down the NCAA rankings a university sits.
Another area in which a lack of funding can affect lower D1 or D2 schools involves travel. D1's Arizona State University is regularly capable of taking a dozen people to the east coast for an event, but the same might not be said for a different west-coast college with a smaller budget. That then affects where they can play and has an impact on their schedule as well as their long-term aspirations.
But with such a finite number of places at top-level D1 schools and no guarantee of a successful career as a pro golfer, ASU's Sutton - who attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham - reiterated that choosing the right school for you is more important than simply attending a big name.
He said: "I'll say this, I had the best four years of my life at a school that was not ASU because it was the right school for me. If I went to ASU, it could have been the worst experience in a way. I probably wouldn't have played any tournaments. I probably would have been kind of shuttled off the field like, 'hey, you got to go somewhere else.'
"It's all about finding the right fit. I think if you do that in college, you still play maybe 45 events over your four years. You hopefully play for championships at some level, so it's still a great experience."
