The Ultimate Guide to Golf Scholarships for Girls
For young female golfers with aspirations of playing at the collegiate level, understanding the landscape of golf scholarships is crucial. This comprehensive guide breaks down everything you need to know about women’s golf scholarships, including requirements, divisions, and strategies for getting noticed by college coaches.
Understanding the Scholarship Landscape
College coaches operate with a finite pool of money to allocate among recruits and current players. Due to budget constraints, college coaches have a limit of nine roster spots and can distribute their scholarship money across several athletes on their team. Depending on the program’s budget, some athletes may receive a full ride golf scholarships, while others could only be offered a partial golf scholarship. These funds can be divided into partial or full scholarships, depending on the program’s funding, allowing them to recognize and award multiple athletes on their team. Some college programs are fully funded and can provide full rides to their top performers, while others may offer partial scholarships to several of the athletes on their team.
It's important to dispel the myth that women's golf scholarships often go unused. The truth is that women’s college golf is incredibly competitive and scholarships at most levels are hard to obtain.
Starting in the 2025-2026 academic year, the NCAA will eliminate D1 scholarship limits, enabling all sports to distribute scholarships more flexibly among athletes.
How Coaches Evaluate Talent
Women’s golf coaches prioritize scholarships to recruits who can make an impact right away. These athletes improve the team’s overall score and are competitive at the district, regional and state level. Then, coaches recognize the travel team. As a reminder, in college golf, only the top five golfers travel to tournaments and once there, the top four players compete.
Read also: Understanding the NCAA Golf Format
Many recruits misjudge their chances by looking at scores across the entire college roster. In reality, if you’re looking for an athletic scholarship, your scores need to be competitive with the top four golfers on the team. To accurately evaluate opportunity, our recruiting coaches recommend finding the average score of the best four players on the team and then adding three shots to your own average score. So, if you normally shoot 85 in high school, look at college rosters as if you shoot 88. How does your score match up against the top four athletes? As you search for college opportunities, keep in mind that coaches are looking for recruits who can come in and make an impact right away. If your score doesn’t stand out among the current roster, or you’ll be competing to make the travel team, you’ll probably have fewer scholarship opportunities at that particular program.
Key Factors for Earning a Golf Scholarship
Several factors influence a coach's decision to offer a golf scholarship.
Athletic Ability and Tournament Performance
Multiple-day tournament play is the number one factor coaches consider when recruiting student-athletes. Competing in tournaments is crucial when it comes to women’s golf recruiting. College coaches highly value tournament experience and national rankings over high school experience and achievements. Many high school events are only nine holes, while college tournaments are always over 6,000 yards. So, to conduct full evaluations of potential recruits, coaches overlay their scores with tournament experience. Student-athletes can do a simple search on Junior Golf Scoreboard to find a verified event in their area.
The most prestigious junior and amateur golf competitions are conducted by the United States Golf Association (USGA) and require student-athletes to qualify. The American Junior Golf Association (AJGA), Future Collegians World Tour (FCWT) and the International Junior Golf Tour (IJGT) also offer multiple day competitions across the country and attract top recruits and college programs alike.
Academic Excellence
An outstanding GPA and high test scores show college coaches that you’re more likely to succeed in a college setting and can possibly earn academic scholarship money. College coaches focus their efforts on recruits who excel academically.
Read also: Collegiate Golf Guide
Communication and Self-Promotion
Don’t wait to get “discovered.” You need to create a communication strategy and market yourself to college coaches. They don’t have the time or budget to see every recruit play in person.
Academic Eligibility
Lastly, remember to register for the NCAA Eligibility Center, which determines a student-athlete’s academic eligibility based on core course requirements, grades and test scores. To secure a roster spot and athletic scholarship at the NCAA D1 and D2 levels, student-athletes must meet specific academic requirements established by the NCAA Eligibility Center. They’re required to register with the eligibility center and answer questions pertaining to their amateur status. The academic requirements vary slightly between divisions, but generally speaking, student-athletes need to take 16 core courses throughout high school, maintain a minimum GPA in these core courses.
Navigating the Different Divisions
Before reaching out to college coaches, student-athletes need to do their homework and learn about the different divisions. For example, which ones offer golf scholarships? And what scores do you need to qualify?
NCAA Division I (D1)
NCAA D1 is the highest level in women’s college golf. Only 2.8 percent of high school golfers go on to play in this division. Competition is fierce and coaches make offers to their top prospects starting the summer after sophomore year. Starting in the 2025-26 school year, NCAA D1 women’s golf programs will have a roster limit of 9 and can offer up to 9 scholarships. Keep in mind that not all golf programs are fully funded, meaning coaches may have fewer scholarships to give than the maximum allowed. If you’re interested in securing a D1 roster spot, you need to kick off your recruiting journey early. First, make sure you qualify both academically and athletically. Pick a few schools you’re interested in and visit the team’s roster to see average scores and tournament experience. Then, work on improving your national ranking.
NCAA Division II (D2)
NCAA Division 2 coaches also follow the equivalency method. They can award a maximum of eight D2 golf scholarships per team and decide how to distribute these funds. Most coaches spread out their money and offer partial scholarships to their athletes. Some coaches will allocate funds evenly across players, while others award the top performers. It’s important to note that not all D2 programs are fully funded, so some coaches may have less scholarship money available than others.
Read also: Knights Golf Polo
NCAA Division III (D3)
Technically speaking, NCAA Division 3 coaches can’t offer athletic scholarships-or at least they can’t label them that way. Instead, these coaches work with the admissions department to create competitive financial aid opportunities for their student-athletes, such as academic scholarships, grants and work study. In fact, 82 percent of NCAA D3 athletes receive some sort of aid.
NAIA
NAIA follows the same equivalency guidelines as the NCAA when offering athletic scholarships. Coaches at this level have five NAIA golf scholarships per team and mostly offer partial scholarships to recruits and current roster players. NAIA is often compared to D3 and some D2 golf programs in terms of competition. This level could be a great fit for student-athletes who started their recruiting journey later in high school and are looking for athletic scholarships.
NJCAA
Student-athletes will find the most scholarship opportunity at the NJCAA level. There are several JUCO programs that sponsor golf but don’t field a full team, so they sponsor one to three individuals. Either way, JUCO golf can be a great opportunity for student-athletes looking to secure an athletic scholarship. In many cases, financial aid packages can cover tuition, books and more.
Expanding Your Search and Finding the Right Fit
We always ask student-athletes, “Would you still want to go to this school if you didn’t play your sport?” It’s so important to find a college that is the right fit overall. With over 7,000 women golfers competing across 996 teams from NCAA Division I to junior colleges, the competition for scholarships is fierce. Golf scholarships are often divided among different athletes, so full scholarships are rare but can still happen.
Examples of Women's Golf Programs
We’ve compiled a list of the best women’s golf colleges in all three NCAA divisions and the NAIA. Student-athletes who want to be recruited at one of these schools need to research the requirements coaches are looking for, including average golf scores and tournament experience.
- NCAA Division 3: Emory University, Amherst College, Washington University in St. Louis.
Alternative Golf Scholarship Opportunities
Golf scholarships offered by outside organizations are more common than in many other sports as the game has grown in popularity with players like Tiger Woods bringing more spectators to the sport. While the NCAA still controls a large portion of the funding awarded by colleges, golfers willing to do a bit more research will find that scholarships in the sport are easier to find than they thought.
A goal and trend of golf scholarships recently has been to broaden the diversity in the field, with many awards now targeting women and minorities. Such awards often only require an interest in the field or intent to pursue golf in the future, with less emphasis placed on being the best golfer on your high school team. Other awards from golf associations looking to reward college-bound golfers often place some weight on financial need, extracurricular activities and academic records beyond talent. Don’t rule out the lesser-known funding sources, as they may be far less competitive and just as generous as awards given by your college.
Examples of Golf Scholarship Organizations
- The Women's Western Golf Foundation: Established in 1971 by the Women’s Western Golf Association and is committed to increasing participation of women in golf and dedicated to providing Women’s Western Golf Foundation Scholarships to worthy and deserving undergraduate women. WWGF individual scholarships are in the amount of $5,000 per year, renewable for four years.
The Mental Game and Overcoming Challenges
Golfing is a sport that embodies the art of challenge. In itself, golfing is an activity meant to push boundaries, challenge the body and mind, and build tangible energy within the holder of a golf club. This mind and body challenge makes golfing so enjoyable as a sport. The mentality that golfing gives you is something you carry with you as long as you do your golfing bag. That is where the real challenge comes along. Golfing can bring your mind to ease or begin a war of rage and retaliation against those who see you as inferior. The art of becoming "good" at golfing starts with training both your swing and your mind. As your mind becomes acquainted with the challenges of the heat, the mocking, and the mistakes, it becomes meditative. Golf is more than just "being the best."Golf is about being okay with mistakes of what could have been and being compelled to challenge yourself the next time you pick up your driver.
As a woman passionate about golfing, I have overcome more mental challenges than I ever thought possible for a sport about hitting a ball into a hole. According to the National Golf Foundation, only around 25% of golfers are said to be women, which is a 14% increase since 2019. However, this does not stray from the fact that golfing is a predominantly male-dominated sport.
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