Florida Atlantic University junior Nan Tyson held off a fierce back-nine charge from Arset Urian to win the men's individual title at the 39th PGA Works Collegiate Championship, the showpiece event of HBCU and minority-serving institution college golf, played this week on the par-71 layout at the Park in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Tyson, who had carried at least a share of the 36-hole lead into the weekend at the Gil Hanse-designed municipal layout, began the final round in front and ground his way home in mostly settled conditions — sunshine, low-80s temperatures and a steady breeze — for what the Golf Channel's broadcast called the cleanest round of the week from the eventual champion.
The drama, however, came late. Tyson's lead, which had stretched to five strokes through 11 holes, was down to a single shot by the time he stood on the 16th tee, with Cyprus's Arset Urian — a senior at Keiser University — reeling him in with a string of birdies on the back nine. Urian's tee shot at the par-four 16th finished inside a foot of the hole, and the resulting tap-in birdie pulled him to within a stroke of the lead.
Tyson's response was the shot of the tournament. From 290 yards on the par-five 17th, with the title in the balance, he lashed a long approach to within tap-in range and then converted, the kind of moment the Golf Channel's analyst said would settle most weeks. "The lead was five through 11," the broadcaster said. "It was down to one after 16. And he stood up and made the putt that mattered to win it all."
That birdie at 17, paired with a closing par at the last, restored the cushion Tyson had built earlier and sealed his name on the men's individual trophy. He becomes the latest Florida Atlantic player to feature near the top at the event, and one of five national champions crowned across the divisions on the day.
Further down the leaderboard, Sasha Robinson, the Florida A&M sophomore who had been the most-discussed name through three rounds, kept his team in the conversation with three birdies and no bogeys in his final round, finishing strongly with a holed approach into the closing holes that the broadcast said showed off his ceiling. The Florida A&M men's effort was central to the Division I men's team race that had been billed all week.
In the women's individual race, UNC Wilmington freshman Alexa Fetta — the Atlantic Sun freshman of the year — held the third-round lead and saw it through, executing a banked pitch into a tucked pin on the closing stretch and rolling in the resulting birdie putt to finish what the broadcast crew described as "played how he needed to with that big lead" before pivoting to confirm Fetta as the women's national champion.
The Park, which opened in 2021 on the site of the former West Palm Beach Municipal Golf Course, has now hosted the event for several editions, and the Hanse-designed layout — the par-five third was described mid-broadcast as having been "designed to be a three-shot par five" — provided the variety of risk-reward decisions the tournament's organisers wanted on display.
The PGA Works Collegiate Championship, run by the PGA of America, is the oldest minority college golf championship in the United States and continues to operate as both a competitive showpiece and a pathway event into the wider golf industry — a context the broadcast acknowledged repeatedly during the closing stretch as Tyson, Urian, Fetta and Robinson worked through their rounds.