2026 NCAA Championships Check-In Brentley Romine

The 2026 NCAA Championships are off and running at Omni La Costa in Carlsbad, California. Nobody follows the college game closer than Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine, who joined us for a Q&A to recap Stanford’s dominant season on the women’s side and preview what’s to come this weekend in the men’s championship.

We’ll get to Stanford and the dynasty, but we have to start with the story of the championship, Eastern Michigan’s semifinal run in its first-ever NCAA postseason appearance. How did a team from the MAC go from being 226th in the country to a national title contender so quickly?

Brentley Romine: I feel like this is one of those 2026 movie reboots of “Cinderella” where Cinderella's fairy godmother is actually the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and just wants to pay her way to the ball instead of turning the pumpkin into a carriage.

Basically, what you have is a founder of a big, charitable, philanthropic company, GameAbove, that’s run by an Eastern Michigan alum who wants to invest upwards of $15-20 million in the golf programs. That's on par with a lot of these Power Four schools. That's the first piece, and then the second piece is to bring in experienced coaches on a decent salary. Lo and behold, Josh Brewer was let go from Georgia, didn't think he was going to coach again, and he gets the call from Ypsilanti, Michigan. The rest is history when you bring in a recruiter like that and give him some NIL money to work with. He brought a player with him from Georgia (Savannah De Bock), he gets the twins (Janae and Jasmine Leovao) — this wasn't just simply, ‘I have all the money, I'm just gonna go out and get the best players.’ None of those girls is ranked inside the top 100. And he brought in Baiyok Sukterm from Lindsey Wilson College in Kentucky, an NAIA school. EMU had a player in the lineup this past week who was ranked outside the top 1,600.

It's one thing to have the funding, which is great in golf. It’s not expensive, especially on the women's side, to attract top talent like that. But at the same time, you still have to buy in. You still have to hit the putts. Benjamin Franklin doesn't make birdie putts. So they still had to come together. It’s certainly a unique dynamic, with the twins spending a majority of the spring season in California where they're from, but at the same time, do you think quarterback Carson Beck was taking in-person classes all week at Georgia and Miami? I think as long as the team is on board with that, why not do it? Clearly the chemistry was strong, otherwise they wouldn't have made it that far.

Is EMU’s use of the transfer portal and immediate success a potential new movement in the sport, or just an exciting moment?

Romine: I think it could be, and this is certainly the moment where if things are going to take off, they're going to take off. Two years ago people knew (Eastern Michigan) was getting this influx of support financially, but hadn't put it into practice yet. Now that they've gotten all the way to the semifinals of the national championship, I would not be surprised to see Eastern Michigan tap into the portal and reload with some pretty good players.

There might be an alum out there for a mid-major, or even lower-level Power Four school that sees Eastern Michigan and thinks, ‘Hmm…this is what it takes? I can do that.’ Eastern Michigan has proven this can get done and it can get done really quickly.

If First Take did a segment on Stanford women’s golf, would Stephen A. Smith argue the program’s dominance is bad for the sport?

Romine: I have a hard time trying to predict what Stephen A. Smith will say!

All kidding aside, Stanford defeats USC, 4-1, in the final match for its fourth title in program history, and third in the last five years. Head coach Anne Walker admitted this might be the best team she’s ever coached, a rare proclamation from her. For readers who haven’t been as plugged in to the college game, can you put into context just how good this year’s team was? And how good Stanford has been the last few seasons?

Romine: I think you hit the nail on the head in that Anne isn’t one to give us headline material like that, but she said that before they even won the national championship! She said if she could coach this group for the rest of her career it’d be the greatest job in the world. This has been not only her best team, she thinks, but the most rewarding and fun team to coach. With this year’s title, Stanford went out and really found the cherry on top of what you could argue is probably the best college golf season of all time.

When you look at Stanford’s body of work, they only lost to three teams all year, two of which were in match play. I find it funny that San Jose State, which didn't even qualify for regionals, was one of those losses this spring. Credit to the team for calling a players-only meeting after the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and saying, look, we know that we can win a 72-hole stroke play tournament with our eyes closed, we're that good, but we know that match play is so unpredictable. We can't make mistakes. We need to be locked in. That’s exactly what they did. Senior leader Megha Ganne came out Tuesday evening and said they wanted to go 15-0 in match play, and they nearly did that. They went 14-1 in NCAA match play. Kelly Xu became the first player in history to win 10 matches in an NCAA Championship career. Megha Ganne is 9-2 in her career, that’s exceptional, as well. In the last six years, they’ve won more tournaments than they have head-to-head losses, 43 to 35. That's just absurd stuff. But again, you shouldn't be surprised by anything that Stanford does.

Megha Ganne has entered Perry Ellis (Kansas) and Robbie Hummel (Purdue) territory because we’ve been talking about her for so long at all of these big events. It was pretty fitting for her to end her illustrious college career with a win and to be the player to earn the clinching point. How early should we expect her to contend at the next level?

Romine: Well, we'll find out in just a few days as she’ll begin her professional career at the U.S. Women’s Open. This is a player who five years ago burst onto the scene as a high schooler, earning low amateur honors at the U.S. Women’s Open at Olympic Club. A player who, even at that age, just had so much charisma, so much confidence, but her career hasn't necessarily been a straight line. She's battled injuries and down parts in her game. I thought it was interesting when she said, maybe not necessarily her favorite tournament this spring, but the one she's glad that happened the most was the Augusta National Women's Amateur, her sixth and final ANWA start. She wanted to win so badly, but she missed the cut by eight shots. She said she was uncomfortable over the ball and looked totally lost. She even sat out a couple of tournaments just to rest her body and recharge. At the end of the day, great, all-time players figure it out. Stanford's probably super glad that she peaked at the right time, finishing runner-up in NCAA Championship stroke play, and then she didn't even play the last three holes in any of her matches.

I think Megha has a chance to do some pretty cool things in professional golf. As long as she stays healthy, she has a chance to be someone who could win a major or at least a handful of LPGA events.

The men’s NCAA Championship begins Friday. Jackson Koivun and his Auburn Tigers enter as the top-ranked player and team. Just how heavily favored are they both to take home the hardware?

Romine: Jackson is putting together one of the all-time best seasons and semesters in college golf history. He obviously is the favorite, but there are two other guys in the individual field who would probably be Player of the Year most other years, and that's Preston Stout (Oklahoma State) and Ben James (Virginia). Stout is coming off his third straight Big 12 title and is just an absolute killer on the golf course. James hasn't finished outside of the top five this season but he doesn't win a lot — I think that probably comes down to his putting being a liability at times. Everything else is really good. So those are the three guys who, if you took the field and I took those three, I probably feel pretty good about that. If you throw in a Christiaan Maas of Texas, I feel really good about that four.

Team-wise, Auburn proved it last week, being a couple of bogeys away from not advancing through regionals: there’s so much parity at the top. The top six or seven teams in the country are all pretty interchangeable. But sometimes it's good to get punched in the mouth a little bit. I think the worst thing for the Tigers’ opponents is that they got the wake-up call they probably needed. They're the favorites, but you can’t count out a team like Texas. When you look at the World Amateur Golf Ranking, Virginia is built to win now coming off its national runner-up finish a year ago. Loads of upperclassmen are on that team, including Paul Chang, the former club team golfer who played his way onto the Div. I roster. Oklahoma State as well, it's kind of weird when you get to the fourth or fifth contending team, which is also the defending champion that brought back all five players from last year. There are just a lot of teams that could make a run and not be a surprise. Florida was great at regionals. LSU's hungry after not getting here last year. Looking at the rankings, you can go all the way down to BYU at No. 22 and make a case. It’s just such a big field.

What are some other storylines you’ll be watching throughout stroke play and into match play?

Romine: I think there's an interesting dynamic with Oklahoma and head coach Ryan Hybl, who has accepted the head coach position at Georgia Tech beginning next year. He helped revive this program 17 years ago. He won a national championship in 2017. He is Oklahoma golf and he's considered one of, if not the best, coaches in men's college golf. So it's a huge loss for Oklahoma and you just have to wonder what’s going to happen. These players had to have known about this before regionals, and they went out and won in Oregon. They have a senior in Jase Summy who I think as long as he plays well — junior Ryder Cowan had a great year too — these guys still have a lot of pride and it’d be something if they made a run because they're capable of winning a national championship.

This is the NCAA’s third year at Omni La Costa. What’s the reception been like and how does the course stand up as a championship test?

Romine: The greens were super hard that first year and that's obviously going to be the case with any course that gets renovated or redesigned. The course has grown in, the rough is more consistent, the greens are more receptive — almost a little too receptive for the women. I think from a conditioning standpoint, really the only issue I still hear from coaches is the bunkers. The bunkers have really soft faces, a lot of plugged shots, pretty clumpy sand in the bottom due to how they rake it. But other than that, I think a lot of coaches who were skeptical coming in a couple of years ago are probably a lot more on board. Memories are starting to be developed with some of these finishes. The whole point is to get to a place where you're like the Masters where you're coming back to the same place year after year and you can have iconic shots. You can have records that are more relatable and maybe mean a little bit more.

Aside from the golf, the chance to stay at a great property and roll out of bed and walk to the range is ideal for players and coaches — the only downside is it's pretty expensive here. A $25 hamburger is not something you can really afford to eat for two straight weeks.

I think all in all, Texas coach John Fields’ idea to create an Omaha for college golf like college baseball was an admirable endeavor when he started it, and he's made it come to life really well. But there's still a lot of work to do. I don't think they've quite got the funding they hoped for when they started the College World Golf Championship Foundation. I think the onus now is on these professional players who are making ridiculous sums of money, who played college golf, and who are looking for areas to give back. I mean, what better way to leave a sport better than you found it by fully endowing the national championships in perpetuity and hosting them here at Omni La Costa? There’s still potential and room for growth, but I think they've come a long way.