Top-ranked California three-peated its way through the 37th John A. Burns Intercollegiate this week at Turtle Bay’s Palmer Course.

Golden Bears golfers finished 1-2-3 individually Friday, led by medalist Joel Stalter. Michael Kim, ranked No. 1 nationally by Golfweek and Golfstat, finished ninth.

It doesn’t take a graduate of Cal’s Haas School of Business, where three Bears are enrolled, to figure how much it cost Cal athletics to win its sixth tournament in seven tries this school year.

Zero, nothing, nada. Cal golf is self-funded.

"In my 33-plus years here," Bears coach Steve Desimone said Friday, "we have never cost the athletic department a cent."

The department dumped the program in 1979, after 67 years. The director of recreation and intramural sports asked Desimone, a golf buddy, to coach a club team.

Desimone, now 64, was a former Cal basketball player who honed his golf game during a 19-month Navy tour at Pearl Harbor in the early ’70s. He had no interest in getting involved in intercollegiate sports after seeing what went on in the ’60s.

But he also had a vision, and the energy and ability to bring together remarkable student-athletes and the Cal Golf Committee. It is made up of about 30 alumni and now raises enough to fund a $525,000 annual budget and a $3.75 million endowment that Desimone hopes will grow to $10 million.

"I still think college athletics is about as shaky as it can get," the coach said. "What changed my mind is that I had the opportunity to do something at Cal and … I don’t want to sound egotistical, but it would be a model program if we do it right.

"The idea was to get a program that gives young men great educational opportunities at Cal and lets them play in a nationally competitive golf program that never existed before."

He began as a volunteer coach with a $2,500 budget in 1980. Two years later, golf was reinstated as a varsity sport. In 1990, the Bears went to regionals and started to give scholarships again.

In 1995, they nearly won an NCAA title with current PGA Tour player Charlie Wi and a still-minuscule budget. In 2004, Cal won the NCAA title. Last year it was third.

Everybody is back. The Bears won all five spring starts and Burns was the 50th tournament victory of Desimone’s career. Cal was the only team to break par (14-under-par 850) this week and won by 27 shots over fifth-ranked New Mexico.

Stalter, a member of the French national team, started and ended with rounds of 5-under 67 in the rain and wind. He won by eight over Max Homa — the team’s only senior, who has finished second here three years in a row.

Michael Weaver, the third-place Bear, has invitations to The Masters and U.S. Open because he was a finalist at the U.S. Amateur. The 135-pound Kim came here with a sub-70 scoring average.

"It is one helluva team and it has a really great game plan," Desimone said. "The guys are doing a great job of executing it. It helps to have great student-athletes."

The Cal coach knows of no other self-funded Division I golf teams, but does see it as "the wave of not the immediate future but the eventual future" for "Olympic sports."

Hawaii coach Ronn Miyashiro, who raises about $75,000 annually for a budget that is half that of Cal’s, shudders at the thought.

"I hope it never happens here, but if it does, our program has quite a few supporters now," Miyashiro said. "If the time came, I hope people would step up and help us survive."

The Rainbows were ninth at Burns the past two years. This year UH Hilo (313–910) took ninth and the Rainbow A team (310–913) shared 11th, led by senior Cory Oride’s 20th-place finish.

The Rainbow B team (313–934) was 15th despite Ryan Kuroiwa’s ninth-place finish (71–221). Brigham Young-Hawaii (317–946) was last. BYU junior Justin Keiley, a Baldwin graduate, was seventh at 74–218.