Put those rush parties, scavenger hunts and spring break escapes in the rear-view mirror. For collegiate golfers, it’s game face time—the NCAA Championships. The Women’s Division I event has already kicked off and will wrap May 21, while the men take the stage May 23-28. For the second consecutive year, the host venue is Omni La Costa Resort & Spa’s North course in Carlsbad, Calif. Oddly enough, the tournament is hosted by the University of Texas ... in California. It will remain there through at least 2028. Credit Omni for stepping up to revitalize one of America’s iconic golf resorts and University of Texas men’s golf coach (of 28 years) John Fields for the idea.
“Our ownership group has deep ties to the University of Texas in Austin,” said Spencer Cody, corporate director of golf and club operations for Omni Hotels & Resorts. “Coach Fields, who’s a visionary in his own right, was really excited about the project—with Gil Hanse and Beau Welling updating the courses and facilities—and loved the idea of having the NCAA Golf Championships at a neutral site, like the NCAA does with baseball in Omaha. The vision is to make Omni La Costa, and particularly the North course, the forever home of these championships.”
Fields, who has coached Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth and Johnattan Vegas at Texas, together with Texas Athletic Director Chris Del Conte, former Oklahoma State coach Mike Holder and the Rowling family that owns Omni turned their “Road to Omni La Costa” into reality in 2024. It was a smashing success. For all the moving parts and hopeful well-wishers, however, it was the Gil Hanse makeover of the resort’s North course that elevated the experience into “major-worthy” territory.
Omni La Costa: A Storied PGA Tour History
Omni La Costa was best known to golf fans for hosting 30 editions of the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions from 1969-1998, where winners included Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. In 1999 and 2000 and again from 2002-2006, La Costa was the venue for the WGC-Match Play, where Woods won twice. So, we’re talking about some famous footsteps.
The PGA Tour held its events on a composite course comprised of holes 1-3 and 13-18 on the North course, which formed the front nine holes and 10-18 of the South course, the composite layout’s back nine. Hanse, partner Jim Wagner and their team of shapers known as "the Cavemen" were charged with transforming the North course from admired, but tired and one-dimensional to something altogether different, one with sufficient challenge to test the greatest collegiate players, yet with enough variety and fun factor to provide members and resort guests an enjoyable romp.
Mission accomplished.
Hanse boosted ground game options, reduced fronting bunkers, bumped up strategic risk/reward opportunities and restored native plants and waterways. As the North course opened immediately before the women descended on Omni La Costa, the brand new greens might have been a tad too firm for some tastes. Nonetheless, there was nothing fluky about the winners: top-ranked Stanford claimed last year's women’s crown and top-ranked Auburn grabbed the men’s title.
“I love this course,” said Virginia All-American Ben James, who finished runner-up in the 2024 NCAA Championship individual competition. “It’s really tough; it’s really good. There are some courses in the NCAA where you can fake your way around it. You can’t fake it out here. It exposes every part of your game.”
Omni La Costa North will play 7,538 yards, par 72 for the men with greens stimping between 12.5 and 13.5. The women have encountered a 6,330-yard layout with greens in the 11.5-12.5 vicinity. More neutrality—It will neither be too hot, or too chilly, with temperatures for the two tournaments slated to range from 63 degrees to 79 for highs, and 56 degrees to 61 for the lows. The mostly southwesterly winds will average a manageable 9 to 12 mph throughout. In other words, conditions favor no one.
Holes That Will Decide the NCAAs
The team and individual tournaments will undoubtedly come down to who best handles the closing stretch. Although there are multiple highlights across the first 13 holes, it’s the final five that deliver the kind of variety and challenge that define a true championship layout.
Nastiest on the North is the par-4 14th, which measures 517 yards for the men, 386 for the women. It played as the toughest hole at the 2024 Men’s NCAAs, with a stroke average of 4.59.
Dustin Irwin, PGA, club director for Omni La Costa Resort & Spa, breaks down the hole that broke down the best collegians: “Hanse’s team extended the length, moved the green to the right to bring the creek into play and it plays into the wind,” Irwin told SI. “If your second shot bleeds just a little bit right, it’s going to get wet.”
The 14th features a split fairway. The more aggressive line to the left fairway, Irwin says, brings O.B. into play, but you benefit with more of a straight look at the hole on the second shot. The right-side drive is safer, but it brings in the intimidation of the water that must be carried and also avoided for pushed shots.
The par-4 15th—371 for the men, 312 for the women—is drivable under the right circumstances, but don’t tell that to Coach Fields. “I advise our players to lay up off the tee, no matter what the wind is doing or where the hole is placed,” he tells SI. “Pick a club that will leave you 100 yards in. That green is a small target and it’s real trouble if you go long.”
Hanse countered, “Yes, we hope that 15 is drivable under the right conditions.”
Irwin loves how the 15th can tempt the player and offers options, especially with a bailout area short and right of the shallow green that’s fiercely bunkered in front and that falls away back-left.
“With the NCAAs being match play, if you’re down two on 15 and you need to make a move, this hole lets you try,” Irwin says. “If you want to get really aggressive off the tee, you can position it to the right of the green in that open area and have a nice little manageable uphill pitch. But if you hit a little draw and it reaches the green with some overspin, there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to go over and go down into the hazard in the back. So it’s definitely risk/reward."
History buffs will recall the lake-guarded, par-3 16th from a one-hole playoff it hosted to decide the rain-plagued 1997 Tournament of Champions, when Tiger Woods planted a 6-iron to six inches to slam the door on Tom Lehman and claim victory. Hanse shortened the hole to 162 yards maximum for the men (the women will play it between 130 and 154 yards) and repositioned the green to function as a mirror image of the 12th at Augusta National. It is placed on the diagonal, but from front-right to back-left. As with its Masters doppleganger, its green is fronted by one bunker, backdropped by two bunkers and serves up a steep slope that leads to the water.
While the 491-yard, par-4 17th (356-390 for the women) is hardly a pushover, it nicely sets the table for the brutal closing hole. At 605 yards for the men, and between 410 and 497 yards for the women, it’s a perilous par-5 for both groups.
Who Will Win the 2025 NCAA Championships
The first spotlight shines on the women, so we’ll start there. In the team competition, Florida State makes for a compelling pick. The Seminoles won the Lexington Regional at 15-under par and feature two of the top three players in the country, top-ranked Mirabel Ting from Malaysia , who has five wins and seven top-3s in just 10 events; and Lottie Woad, the Englishwoman who won twice in 2024-’25, with 10 top-3s in 12 events, plus a triumph in the 2024 Augusta National Women’s Amateur, which propelled her to claim the number 1 amateur ranking in the world in June 2024.
Nevertheless, the pick here is defending champion Stanford. The defending NCAA champions are undefeated in stroke play events in the past year, won the Norman Regional with a 22-under score and boast unsurpassed depth. Three members of the Cardinal team are ranked in the top 9, including Andrea Revuelta who won the individual title at the Norman Regionals and five players are among the top 30.
Individual to watch: Spain’s Carla Bernat of Kansas State is ranked just 17th among the nation’s collegiate stars, yet she can lap the field on any occasion. Most recently, she took Individual honors at the Lexington Regional and the month before she lifted the trophy at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
On the men’s side, defending champion and current No. 1 Auburn roared into the NCAAs with a victory in the Regional they hosted, paced by everybody’s All-American, Jackson Koivun, who captured the individual title. As a freshman in 2024, he became the first golfer to sweep the four major awards for college golf, the Haskins Award, the Jack Nicklaus Award, the Ben Hogan Award and the Phil Mickelson Outstanding Freshman Award. Koivun, who made the cut at the 2024 Memorial Tournament, has enjoyed success at Omni La Costa as well, snaring a runner-up Individual finish at the 2024 NCAAs. Auburn is the pick to repeat.
With four golfers ranked in the top 17, can anybody beat Auburn? Perhaps look to the team the Tigers edged in the finals last year, the Florida State Seminoles. Led by the nation’s third-ranked college golfer, Luke Clanton, the Seminoles are only ranked ninth among men’s teams overall, but just won their home Tallahassee Regional with a 29-under-par total. Clanton took individual honors at 15-under par.
Clanton claimed four individual titles this season and is soon on his way to the PGA Tour, after earning a well-documented promotion through the PGA Tour University Accelerated program. Ranked as the No. 1 amateur in the world in August 2024 when he tied for fifth at the Wyndham in Greensboro, Clanton later tied for second in October at the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic. He clinched his card by making the cut at the Cognizant Classic in late February.
And what of the top-ranked men’s college golfer, David Ford of North Carolina? Ford won five times this season, but he and his 13th ranked Tar Heel teammates missed qualifying through the Urbana Regional by one spot, finishing sixth. Based on his current standing at the top of the PGA Tour University Accelerated program, he will earn his Tour card and turn professional.
Whatever the outcome in the team and individual competitions, the safest pick for a winner will be the golf course itself. Omni La Costa North distinguished itself admirably in 2024 as a fresh layout. With a year of maturity to help the greens and the landscape elements, look for it to shine even brighter in 2025.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Omni La Costa North: A Demanding Final Exam for the NCAA Golf Championships.