The Transfer Decision

Chapter 13 of The College Golf Report.

Chapter 13 of The College Golf Report. More than one in three of these players transferred at least once. Almost all of them were glad they did. Here is what the data actually says, and what the ones who did it would tell you.

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When I started coaching, transferring still carried a faint stigma. You committed to a school, and leaving felt like quitting. That is gone now. The portal has made moving normal.

Of the 133 former college golfers I surveyed, 46 transferred at least once. That is 35%, more than one in three. Thirty-eight moved once, eight moved more than once. The other 87 stayed put. I will be honest, that figure was higher than I expected when I opened the data, and the satisfaction figure underneath it was higher still.

If you’re new here, this is a free, weekly walkthrough of a survey of 133 former college golfers.

The Numbers

Here is the breakdown, straight from the survey:

· Transferred at least once: 46 of 133 (35%)

· Stayed at one school: 87 of 133 (65%)

· Of the 46 who transferred, was it a good choice? 39 said yes, 6 said maybe, 1 said no.

So among the players who actually did it, 39 of 46 looked back and said it was the right call. Only one person regretted it outright. That is a striking number, and I want to be careful with it rather than just celebrate it, because there is an obvious bias hiding in there. People tend to justify big decisions after the fact. Nobody likes to think they uprooted their life for nothing. So read the 85% as “very few regretted it,” not as “transferring works 85% of the time.” Those are different claims, and the survey can only support the first one.

A couple of smaller cuts, with the usual caveat that these subgroups get small fast:

· Men transferred at 35% (38 of 108). Women at 32% (8 of 25). Essentially the same rate, though with only 25 women in the sample, treat the women’s figure as directional.

· Players who grew up in the USA transferred at 40% (23 of 58). International players at 31% (23 of 75).

I flag the small samples because it would be easy to spin a story out of these splits, and I do not think the data earns one. The honest summary is that transferring was common across the board.

Not Every Transfer Is the Same Decision

Before getting into why players left, one thing has to be said, because it changes how you read all of it. Not every transfer was a choice to leave a program. Eight of the 46 were structural: junior college players finishing their two years and moving to a four-year school, or players using up eligibility.

“From community college to university.”

“I had to transfer since it was a two year school.”

“Graduated from JUCO”

Those are not “should I stay or should I go” stories. They were always going to move. So when you see a 35% transfer rate, keep in mind that a chunk of it is the normal JUCO-to-four-year path, not players walking away from a school they chose. The discretionary transfer, the one this chapter is really about, is a bit less common than the headline number suggests.

The timing of the moves is its own clue. Of the players who transferred, most did it after their second year (23), then after the first (13), with fewer after the third (4) or fourth (6). The decision tends to land once a player has enough information to know the fit is wrong, but still has enough eligibility left to make a move worth it.

Why They Left

When I read through the reasons players gave for transferring, a handful of themes came up again and again. The biggest one was playing time, the simple matter of not being in the lineup.

“School was not a good fit and I didn’t get any playing time.”

“Wasn’t getting to play in the lineup”

“No playing time”

The second was the coaching relationship. Not coaching quality in the abstract, but the specific human connection with the head coach, and what happened when it broke or when the coach left.