Wondering if you can play college golf? Two coaches give you the real answer. They tell you how to know if you’re ready, what makes some golfers better than others, how to make your own golf plan, how to handle school and golf together, and what it’s like to travel for college golf.
Learn from the Coach who helped famous golfers like Alex Smalley and Joe Ogilvie get to the Pro level after playing at Duke.
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00:00 – Introduction
02:08 – Introduction Coach Jamie Green
08:36 – Rod Myers Invitational
10:24 – What advice would you give to student athletes
19:05 – You want to go to a college where you can compete and play
22:01 – What is the number of young men that were interested in attending Duke
23:17 – Advice to a student’s father
26:14 – Importance of time management
34:36 – What are you looking for in a student athlete
40:12 – Using technology on the course
44:04 – What can a student athlete do to get the attention of a coach
49:28 – Conclusion and Final Thoughts
We’re very excited about uh being able to bring a couple of guests here in the near future that uh I think will lend some really uh legitimate guidance to the uh men and young women that are going to be looking at this trying to navigate the waters of and their difficult waters of uh high school recruitment into collegiate golf. So, we have uh with us uh TJ Atley who’s recording this and is kind of the mentor for the two of us because she knows a lot more than we do. At least one of us, the one that’s talking. That’s that’s two. That’s not a peace sign. That’s two. She knows more than two of us. And so uh her credentials I would urge anyone to go online and um we didn’t rehearse this but she’s got more letters than uh than a doctor. Um remember the PGA LPGA of Canada um has published how many books? Eight books. Eight books now. Eight books now. and has generally helped uh many college youngsters uh navigate those tough waters as I said. So, we’re happy to have her on this call with me. Uh for those of you that don’t know me, uh which is probably the large segment of golf. I tried to stay behind the uh behind the cacti. Uh I’m Mike Hughes, the former golf coach at Brown University. Um before that, I was at Depal as an assistant. Um, I finally retired after close to 17 years and uh now we’re trying to consult and help uh youngsters get to the next level to play collegiate golf. Um, and for our first guest, this is our very first uh mid voyage as we were saying a few minutes ago. I am so happy to uh present my very good friend and fellow former coach Jamie Green from Duke University. So we can clap. Yay, Jamie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody out there who we can’t hear. And Jamie was uh previously at UNC Charlotte. And if I recall my bio uh study, I believe that you were an Ohio Wesleyan grad. Is that correct? I that is correct. Way back when I I played college golf. I’m from Ohio and I played my college golf at a division three school uh Ohio Wesleyan University just north of Columbus, Ohio. And there’s a there’s a little bit of an interesting tie. Um Rod Meyers, who was the very well-known and esteemed Hall of Fame all over, he’s he’s he may not have as many letters after TJ Atley’s name, but he’s got a lot of them. Uh we lost him unfortunately to leukemia in 2007, but I bring him up because he was the golf coach at at Duke University from 1974 to 2007. And a little bit of trivia is that he and I both played for the same golf coach at Ohio Wesleyan University. So kind of kind of an interesting tie. They were obviously Coach Gordon uh Dick Gordon or Doc as we used to call him. Um he also passed away in the 2000s, but uh yeah, he coached for gosh 40 years and Rod Meyers was on the front end of his career and I was the last team in 1993 that he coached at Ohio Wesleyan. So you got your you got your bio right. You had to go deep for that one, Coach Hughes. Well, and then you were also at at Dartmouth. Is that right? Yeah. So, you know, I I played college golf at division three and you know, we can I’m sure you’ll talk about this in your podcast with other coaches. I can I can touch a little bit upon a lot of different levels of of college golf because not only did I play division 3, but I didn’t think I was going to get into coaching whatsoever. Um, I had had a job. In fact, this is kind of a telltale sign of how old I am. Um, this is my 40th year in golf in terms of being employed because I started working when I was 15 as a, you know, just a cart boy and and trying to play some free golf at a golf course nearby and and now I’m 55. So that’s do your math. That’s 40 years in the game of golf. Um, but I started out thinking that I was going to be a a club professional out of college. you know, a little bit of decent play, but not quite good enough to, you know, certainly take a stab at making a living of playing. But I ended up getting a job at Dartmouth College’s home course, Handover Country Club. Uh, Bill Johnson, another Hall of Famer, um, who unfortunately we also lost uh, this year back in 2013, excuse me. But at any rate, the the point being that I was in it for the PGA. And so I I got my class A as a PGA member. And the longer I hung around the the handover country club uh grounds uh in the spring and fall when the Dartmouth men’s team and the Dartmouth women’s team would hang around, uh Bill was the men’s team for many decades and and his wife Izzy was the women’s coach and she was also an LPGA um NPGA member. Um so it was a really cool place for me to to be exposed to college golf in a very different way. you know, um, as a as a club pro where the players came to play and practice, but also to have my boss and mentor be, you know, a PGA professional, kind of cutting edge teaching professional back then. Um, and then, you know, he said, “Hey, what do you think about helping the team out a little bit?” So, I I ended up when my off weekends or whenever I could, I’d travel and and hang out with the Dartmouth tent men’s team. I actually helped the two-lane women’s team for a little while because that, uh, grad was also a Dartmouth grad, uh, Sue Bower. And so, uh, long story short, yeah, I started coaching part-time at Dartmouth. I decided this is what I want to do full-time. So, I moved from there to about as far as you could go, not maybe geographically, but uh, socially, it was interesting. I went from Handover, New Hampshire to Auburn, Alabama, and went from an Ivy League school where we had a pretty dog on team. In fact, the last tournament I was there, the team won in the Ivy League. It wasn’t the Ivy League championship, but they won an event, but I would joined an Auburn team that was ranked in the top 10 in the country athletically. And, you know, the likes of Jason Duffner, who a lot of people have heard of, but also some guys on that Auburn team were good enough to play professionally. So, I I really dove into deep waters um and learned pretty quickly baptism by fire and was at Auburn for two years. I’ll go quickly. UNC, um, Chapel Hill, most people just know it as UNCC for four years as an assistant. And then I was at UNC Charlotte as a head coach from 03 to09, uh, before I ended up at at Duke here from 2009 to 2025. In fact, I’m I’m counting the days, not months or years, that I’ve been a recent uh, retiree. And and actually, I’m thrilled to be on this podcast because this is actually what I’m doing right now. I’m helping junior golfers um find the right fit or find at least what they need to get better at in terms of anything from scheduling tournaments to a little bit of, you know, golf swing instruction to oncourse management, you name it. So, that’s that’s me. Wow, that’s fun. Yeah. Yeah. So, it was it’s been a it’s been an interesting journey. A lot of miles, a lot of different schools and programs. Uh but yeah, to be able to be at a place like Dartmouth to start uh Ohio Wesley and obviously a division three school, they don’t have any athletic scholarships. So focus there is certainly on academics and then to be at Duke here for 16 and 1/2 years. Um you know, it’s it’s been a really great opportunity for me to see what the real student in student athlete goes through on a regular basis. Well, that’s certainly a polished enough resume that uh we are we’re you know, you and I have been friends for a long time and I appreciate you venturing into the waters with us uh kind of either sinking or swimming together, but as a uh as a good friend of mine, it’s it’s you know, anybody that’s watching this should be reaching out towards Jamie Green, believe me. Um, I also wanted to say too that Rod Meyers, isn’t your a golf tournament named after him? It is actually. We when I got there in 2009, um, it had been the Duke Golf Classic. Uh, you know, Duke had hosted a tournament on their home golf course. They’re one of a number of schools now, but a few. There weren’t a ton back then when when in the 1950s they built that golf course. But um he hosted a tournament for a lot of years in the fall and uh we continued the tournament. Uh but we decided to name it after coach Myers and we we did things a little differently than he did. Uh we we hosted all the teams right there at the Washington Duke in which is an amazing facility. I mean regardless of whether you ever u you know would go to Duke as a student or or play college golf there or even play a tournament there just what a what an amazing place to to stay. And one of the reasons why we felt like it was a fun tournament for our coaches and teams to go to is they could, you know, stay in the hotel room and and then walk right downstairs and there’s the putting green, you know, and and the first tea. Pretty hard. It’s kind of like it’s like Bandon Dunes in because I haven’t been there. Yeah. Where the where the property is on the at the course. The golf course is literally owned by the university. The hotel is owned by the university and they are all on campus. And you know, that’s one of the one of the neat things about Duke. I’ll I’ll plug it here a little bit just from a recruiting standpoint. You can you can walk from the middle of campus where the the Duke Chapel is, which is pretty famous. You can walk there uh in less than 9 minutes and and be on the first tea. So, it’s it’s a pretty it’s a pretty cool place if you want to be a collegiate golfer for sure. All right. Well, you know, that’s a that’s a good segue into what uh I was going to ask you about. Um we Jamie and I had the opportunity to speak earlier today and I he and I don’t speak enough. It’s always a good talk to get his perspective but we were talking about uh the success that that uh your program has had or did have. Um guys like uh Alex Smallley and Joe Ogulvie and Kevin Stelman and you’ve got Lney Max Crazyman right now top one of the top 50 players in the world. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So for the young man or young woman that’s watching this podcast, what would be your advice if that’s something that they want to pursue knowing that the road is very hard and treacherous? But in terms in terms of uh speaking specifically about wanting to play professionally after college. Is that what you’re saying? Or what do you mean for someone that wants to play uh certainly professionally and perhaps uh needs just to have a plan as to how to get from point A to point B. Yeah. Well, you know, interestingly, we the the world of college golf is is loaded with elite players on both women and men’s side. There’s no doubt about that. Um to the point where the PGA Tour even decided they needed to create a PGA Tour University where there’s a direct avenue for the best of the best college men’s players to get right onto the PGA Tours Cornferry Tour and have full access. Um that was a huge deal for That’s a huge win. Yeah, it’s a huge win for college golf. Um, a huge win, I think, for the PGA Tour because those those players are are successful when they get out there. And, you know, the old the old way of trying to Monday qualify or go through a Q school when you had to be hot just the right time, you know, to to try to make it out there. There, those opportunities still exist. but to have one for college players and again for anyone who doesn’t know about this and of course you can read up on it is for specifically students who stay in college for four years. So you can’t you know you can’t play great your first or second year like a Tiger Woods for example and have exemptions and and be able to turn pro. Um you have to stay there for four years and basically the they have a point system and if you play well enough in collegiate events um you’re going to get direct access. you have to be one of the top five players in college golf, but you know they they are looking at both junior and senior years. And so that has added one thing you know coach use you know the old the old very simply play better is what you’ll hear from a college coach or you know somebody else who wants a better tea time on the PGA tour and they’re they’re at a policy board meeting and they usually hear well just play better you know that’s the answer but at the end of the day cars all that stuff that’s right that’s right at the end of the day you know whether you are playing at Brown University or you were playing at Um, uh, for let’s see, I’m trying to think of who played in the national championship this year, Virginia and Oklahoma State. You know, you you may be playing at at one of the top two or three or five teams in the country athletically, or you may be playing somewhere else academically, but you still have that same equal opportunity to get onto the PGA Tour through PG tour, PGA Tour U. So, there’s one. um your question about what advice would I have very simply other than saying play better is you you have to have places to get better and I I think when you’re surrounded by people and that doesn’t necessarily always have to be the head coach of the the college golf team sometimes it is sometimes it’s an assistant coach um sometimes there’s a teaching professional nearby at the at the golf course or the the uh university at which you go Um, but I think it’s pretty rare that you ever see anyone make it on the men or women’s side from college who doesn’t have sort of a team around them. You know, you you hear that these days. You you it’s such an all-encompassing game. Um, it’s it’s not just golf swing and ball striking. It’s nutrition. It’s it’s mentality. Um, you know, it’s it’s a it’s so many different things. It’s it’s balancing quite frankly fatigue, you know, when you’re when you’re traveling. I think a lot of folks don’t realize that college golf is is pretty tough just because you you we miss more generally, at least on the division one level um as long as the university allows the school to play in the maximum number of events. You’ll miss as many school days as baseball in division one. And that’s that’s there’s a lot of of missed class there. So, what that requires is an ability to balance and and um you know, take take classes that you know you can handle, take classes obviously that you’re interested in. But, as I kind of digressed over there on the academic side, on the golf side, I think you need to have an opportunity to to to get into tournaments. Um, and and when I say that, you know, sometimes some folks kind of reach for the stars in terms of the team that they’re looking for that they’d like to play. And it’s there’s nothing wrong with with having aspirations and and goals and dreams, but you know to understand that if you want to play for an Oklahoma State or you know this year Virginia made it to the national championship the year before Auburn University and again I’m just speaking on the men’s side. Um there’s only one or two maybe three spots and roster limits have gone down. So you’re the numbers are so few and far between to be able to play on a few of those teams. The point that I make here, I think, is figuring out whether that’s your sophomore, your junior, your senior year in high school, where’s the place where I can play that if I play well and maybe a little better than I’m playing now, it’s good enough for me to go to a tournament. It’s good enough for me to play in the lineup. And that, you know, that there is a little bit of a mystery card there. And that’s not an easy formula to figure out, but I I do think it’s pretty hard for anybody who plays professionally to go to a school and be sitting on the bench on their college team. It’s it’s kind of hard to believe that you’re going to make it professionally if you can’t beat, you know, more than half the players on your own college team. So, I think having opportunities to play wherever you go. Um, and then breaking it down just even more, I I think because players on the men and women’s side on the professional ranks are so used to shooting underpar that the younger you are when you get used to shooting underpar, the better. And I mean that to the degree where I was just helping a young man uh down in Florida a few days ago and he was asking me a very similar question, coach. She said, “You know what? What do you do with your players in college so that they get more comfortable, you know, shooting in the red?” And I said, “Well, one of the first things we do is we set up a golf course where every single hole they play, they’re going to have a wedge in their hand. So, if it’s a par three, they’re going to play from the TE’s that is their wedge distance. It could be a pitching wedge, a gap wedge, a lob wedge, sand wedge. And then we set up all the par4s that they can’t reach with driver, but they can hit something off the tee. Um, and then now maybe they think strategically, but if they hit it decently, they’re going to have a wedge in their hand. And then we have them play the play part of the fives, excuse me, play the par fives from all the way back, assuming that my my mentor Bill Johnson used to say a par five is nothing more than something something and a wedge. So, you know, if we if we put them in position to have 18 wedges in their hand and they’re not shooting under par, now we really got some stuff to look at. But if I don’t care what player you are, um you you got to get really really really good at wedge play. And that was the point that I made to that player as a high school sophomore was, you know, if players think they’re good at wedge play, they’re not good enough. I mean, Tiger Woods is maybe the best example. He was clearly as elite as anybody could come by winning three straight US juniors and three straight US amateurs. But when he got out on the PGA Tour, his wedge game had to get better. And what I mean by that is he had to have more shots in his bag of wedges. He had to have shots that didn’t spin so much. He had to be able to control his trajectory, his landing spot, his spin rate. You know, that’s that wedge game. It’s it can’t be spoken enough about enough. You know, that’s that’s really the key to being able to shoot in the red. And ultimately, if you’re talking about playing professional golf, that’s what you got to do. Let me let me touch on something you said a few minutes ago here, which I find very important. With the overwhelming number of of students that are not going to be able to play on the PGA Tour, um, explain how you would go about saying to a young man or a young woman that you don’t want to be the guy that’s the 12th guy on the bench just because they have a pretty Duke bag. If you’re going to go play college golf, you want to go play college golf. In other words, yeah you being the 12th man on Duke’s team, which is a great honor and the chance to coached by you, but if you’re not going to play, what’s the sense? You know, you want to go someplace where you can fight for a spot in the lineup every time, travel with the team, the the camaraderie of being in a bus or a van is is great, but you want to be able to compete. Yeah. I think, you know, at the end of the day, coaches like you and I and and all those coaches on the men and the women’s sides at at every level will say that I’ll I’ll flip it just a little bit, coach, and I’ll say it ultimately depends on the kind of experience that the student wants. you know, if the student wants to be on the team and go to XYZ University because they have the major that they’re looking for, but the golf team is maybe just a little bit over their head or, you know, maybe they get there um they think they were going to compete, the coach gave them a spot and they’re not playing their best golf. Does that mean they should transfer? You know, if if they’re on the bottom of the bench? I I just think it really depends on what the experience is. Now, if if being on the team and not traveling to tournaments, not being competitive makes you unhappy at that university, I always tell people in the recruiting process, if you look around, and it didn’t matter what school I coached at, I would say the same thing. If if you broke your leg and you couldn’t play, is this where you want to be at school? Is this where you want to go to classes? And if if the answer is yes, then maybe it’s okay to be the 12th person on the team or the ninth person on the team. But however, if your comeback is to say, “No, I don’t care, you know, what the buildings look like and and yes, I care about my degree and yes, I care about my major, but I want collegiate golf, traveling with the team, having the camaraderie, being able to build those stories that you talk about. I want that to be a major part of my college experience.” And if that’s their answer, then yeah, you’ve got to find a place where you can play. That’s one of the things coach and I have always talked about the last few months is there’s a place for everyone for sure. No question about it. I I you know this is this is sort of a weird way to put it but um we have a lot of folks when I was at Duke and and again we’re not talking about very long ago. I I still get emails sent to me thinking on the golf coach at Duke. So um we get hundreds and hundreds. I mean it’s it’s literally um Yeah. What was the what would you say is the most number of young men that were interested in Duke per year? Like over 1,000? Uh it may not be quite that much, TJ, but it’s it’s definitely over 500. I I would say on average it’s in the 700s. Um in in all honesty, the reason why it’s probably not more is because there’s so much good information on the internet now, you know, in the last 20 years where where people can kind of figure it out, you know. Am am I really going to be a good fit there? Whereas, you know, I’m I’m not sure whether college golf was maybe the the trend or the thing to do 40 years ago when the internet wasn’t around, but you know, people probably shot, you know, threw darts in the dark a lot more. They had no idea whether or not they could play at a school or not. Now, there’s there’s all sorts of tools. Um, you know, I know Junior Golf Scoreboard, I’m not not trying to, you know, boast anybody or put a plug out there, but there’s a lot of different websites where you can kind of figure out where your game is as a junior golfer. If you just plugged yourself into that college lineup, could you play there? And of course, there’s always improvement to be made, but at least it gives you how far away am I, you know, am I three shots away? Am I a shot and a half away? Um, am I nine shots away? But the the thing that I had a conversation with a young man’s father. I I say that because I didn’t want to I didn’t want I didn’t want the young man to feel like I was I was uh you know um sort of minimizing his ability, but I I knew pretty quickly he probably wasn’t going to be able to compete on the team at Duke. And you know, he was he was sort of nearing the end of his high school, so he was really looking for a place to play. And he was very he and he the player and his parents were very set on wanting an academic experience that was rigorous that the degree was well known that that they felt like it was going to be a really good place for him um you know to let’s face it be be marketable or have or find a good job. Right? So whether we’re talking about a couple of the pendants behind you on the wall there from the Ivy League or or lots of other schools division two or three or otherwise academics were really important. So what I told them was well if he’s set on playing division one golf that he wants that number you know not not to say here I am played division 3 and uh lots of great players played division 2 division 3 NIA junior college golf but if he wants to play division one golf probably a good thing for him to do is actually to look at the rankings at the end of the year and not look at the top and work your way down to a place where you think you might play in this case and Again, I’m talking to dad here. I wasn’t talking to the student. I said, “Look at the bottom. Look at look at the 312th ranked team in the country and ask yourself academically, do I want to go there?” And if the answer is no, then you just move up. And you just keep going up up up and up from the bottom till you see one to 10 to 15 academic institutions where you say, “Okay, I I could I could be proud of that degree. That’s an academic place I could go.” Well, first of all, at that place, he’s probably going to be able to play on that team, right? So, then the next step becomes, all right, well, now let me do a little bit more digging about what what’s their team like? What culture do they have? Do they have a part-time coach? You know, do they have a travel schedule where I actually get to leave the state? You know, you might have to do a little bit more digging once you do that. But again, I think it’s so easy for players to to kind of start shooting for the stars at first. And and again, nothing wrong with trying, but it’s also okay to say, well, well, let me go look at some places where academically I I like where I I, you know, could graduate from and I know I’d play on the team. You know, maybe I wouldn’t be the best player right away, but I would certainly be good enough to travel in the top five my freshman year. Well, that’s a very different experience. you know, when you know you’re going to go to events the very first year if you just simply play at the level that you’re at without much improvement. That’s that’s a totally different experience that you could have. So, that’s a different way to look at it. Let me let me ask you a question here. Now, now you’ve managed to get into the program that you were hoping for. What would you what advice would you give? I know as a CLR coach, I used to harp on the fact that you had to be great at time management uh in an Ivy League school. Now, maybe maybe that person’s uh experience is different than someone that went to a state school. Maybe not. How important is time management for your the kids that came into you as recruits and made the team and started traveling and playing and competing? It it’s everything to the point where in the first week we would make sure that you know in in our day and age, our maybe not the three of us, but people who are are the age of who we recruit, they’re so used to doing everything on the phone, right? They’re so used to all their calendars and their reminders and everything else is on the phone. But excuse me. What I would do, even as recently as last year, is I would sit our freshman down with a plain old binder calendar that has every 15 minutes. Um, and even if you go one month at a time or one semester at a time, we have we we’ve got highlighters, we’ve got pens, and basically we start with class time, you know, and we’re filling in each day with just the class time. Well, the class meets at 9:00, it ends at 10:30. Let’s say it’s a Tuesday, Thursday class. Well, you can’t just start at 9:00. You got to walk to class. How many minutes does that take? All right. Well, you’re not going to show up right at 9:00. So, you’re going to have to get there. You know, basically, we’re we’re filling up each day starting academically along with starting, excuse me, plugging in how much sleep are you going to get? I mean, let’s not let’s be realistic here. You’re not going to get 12 hours of sleep like you might in the summertime when you don’t have class. So, you know, when are you going to plug in your 8 hours or however many that you need? You know, how long is it going to take you to shower? I mean, I I I may be boring people, but I think the idea here is you just can’t assume anything when you’re a college student. You have to you have to plug in literally everything. Starting with academics, then with your health, and then I’ve got to eat, right? So, where am I going to eat? Am I going to eat the dining hall near my last class? Am I going to eat at the golf course? you don’t want to make that something rushed. Um, better better and better nutrition options are out there on campus, but sometimes it takes a few minutes, you know, to wait for your food. So, again, we’re we’re plugging in absolutely everything. And then you plug in practice time. And just like anything else, if you’ve got college practice that starts at 2:00 p.m., the coach doesn’t want you to be showing up there at 1:59. You know, the coach is expecting you to be there ready to go at 2:00 for whatever the drill is. So to answer your question, I I think a player or a student really needs to see that on paper and realize how many hours are left. And in terms of what is left, it it all depends on your academic rigor. You know, one I’m I’m not the fastest reader, so I might have had to plug in a lot more reading time if I had a history class for for my schedule. Um but if there are classes that you know more and more classes at certain schools meet online so you know maybe that’s a different kind of schedule but the idea of you know you hear the phrase time management or you say it so much that it it’s it almost goes in one ear and out the other until you can actually see it until you actually live it and realize you know and and it’s it’s not uncommon that you go through the first few weeks or months even with a freshman before they really get into a rhythm and and realize Okay, I’ve got I’m feeling good about when I get to practice. I’m not feeling like I’m rushed or, you know, I’m I’m making it to workouts on time at 7 in the morning and I’m actually having time to get breakfast. You know, there takes them a little while to get used to things, but you you can’t state that enough, coach. And and I think the other thing to kind of remember, you know, parents parents can talk about my son or my daughter are they’re they’re so good at time management. And you might even hear a a teacher give a um you know a recommendation for a student that you’re looking at for college team saying, “Oh, he’s just he or she their their time management is just exceptional.” Well, I don’t know how many schools are out there where your high school is anything other than one building. So, sure, you you can be great at time management from 9th grade to 12th grade, but let’s talk about, you know, we have literally two campuses at Duke and they’re a mile away. You have to take a bus to get to one or the other. And you might have your first class class on one campus, your second class on another campus. You better hope the bus isn’t late. You know, it’s a different environment. So, it’s I remember Yeah. University of Washington, I was at the biggest dorm. It was 13 stories and then my electives were literally on the other side of campus. It It was like a 22-minute walk if I walked fast. Right. Right. And then and so again, the idea there is um you can’t and and and we’re just talking about the stuff to do, you know, that that doesn’t that doesn’t have anything to do with sitting out and hanging out and meeting new people, right? And actually watching watching a football game on TV or something, you know. gonna interject with this. Uh what I used to say to my student athletes when they came on campus is it’s kind of a three-pronged attack. You’ve got your academics, which at the institution I was at, that was the most important thing. You’re there to play golf. Golf had hopefully uh enhanced your ability to get in the school. But there’s a social aspect, too. You don’t want to be going to some of these schools. There going to be dances and parties. This is going to be the best time of your life. our our good friend Richie Parker up at handover, your former school there at Dartmouth, will say it beautifully. He goes, “There’s no bad college experience.” That’s very well put, right? I think that’s very, very important. So, if you can say, “Look, I have to devote enough time to my studies. I’m here to play golf.” If you’re a place like Duke and and say to yourself, look, I mean, there are great courses offered at Duke and certainly at Brown University. There’s lots of great things that are going on there that you should also experience while you’re at the campus, right? And and I think the thing to then back up about that, you know, we’re we’re talking about thousands of potential colleges around just the United States, right? There’s there’s a lot of different um setups. And so it it really a lot depends on what the expectations are. Meaning what are the expectations of the professors? What are the expectations of the golf coach? And what are the expectations of the athletic department of the golf team? And at at a place like Duke or an Auburn or I’m just picking schools that have been in the top 25 lately, you know, the expectation is that you will put in however much time is necessary for us to be competitive. And that that has to be something considered, you know, just like me saying I’m not the fastest reader in the world. I’ve got to I’ve got to plug in enough time for me to get my history classes, you know, information read. Well, if if my short game isn’t good enough to get myself in the lineup, it doesn’t matter if there’s only 20 hours of team practice, I might have to put in another 15. And so if it it really depends on who you are as a player, h what you need to work on, how long it takes for you to work on that, and then really what the expectations are of the team. Cuz it’s it it may be, you know, it it may not be a club team, but there may be some teams that a player or student athlete or prospective student athlete could look at where um it’s the demands on the athletic side just aren’t that time consuming. you know, comparatively, I’m not saying they don’t exist, but comparatively, they they may just not be um you know, you you might put in 65% of your time on academics and, you know, 15% of your time on athletics and then the rest of the time you have for social life or whatever else. It it really depends on what the expectations are at the school you’re in. Okay, let me switch gears for a second. Someone’s out there that you is interested. you go watch and play. What are you looking for? Well, one thing that I don’t have to worry about is looking for scores because I can do that on the internet, right? If if the only thing I want to do is find out whether they can shoot under par, I’ I I already know that. I I probably wouldn’t have gone to see them if I didn’t think they could shoot under par. So, what I tend to look at, um, you’ll hear a lot of coaches say, “Well, I’m looking for attitude, or I’m looking for, you know, something that I can’t see on a golf resume.” Um, whether that’s an email or or even if it’s a swing video. Um, I personally am looking for what does the player do between shots, right? Like what what are they what are they doing to get ready for the next shot? How are they preparing for this shot? which um you know I may be looking at a shot where let’s just say an iron shot into a par4 with a tucked pin and the ball is in the rough right so there might be quite a few decisions to be made and and I want I’m looking to see how ready is that player to hit the shot um you know I’m not saying that they need to take very long but by the time they get to their ball they should have some information they should know about what the yardage is they should have an idea of roughly it’s going to be one of about three or four different clubs. Um and then ultimately I I’m going to watch and see whether or not once they’ve made their decision they go through a routine that seems consistent. And when I say that I’ll have had to watch enough shots to know what that consistent routine is. But, you know, if if there’s if it’s a sporadic routine or if it doesn’t look like the player took the time to consider that the golf ball might come out hot out of that fly or lie and go over the green and over the green was out of bounds. You know, those are the things that we tend to look for. I do at least when I was out there recruiting. What are the decisions that are to be made? How quickly do they make them? Do they make them thoroughly? Um, and you know, and the other thing I I told this young man a couple days ago, um, you know, he he has a little little bit of, um, my good friend Joe Inman, who used to coach at Georgia State and also played on tour, Joe said, you know, listen, I as a coach, I said, I want a I want some fire in the furnace. I want some fire in your belly, but I don’t want it to burn down the house. So, that’s that’s something that I I’m okay if I see a little, you know, slap on the hip if if a putt didn’t go in or, you know, if he hit a pitch shot that that rolled out to 12 feet really and it really wasn’t that tough of a shot. But what I tried to describe to this young man afterwards who’s again, he’s a high school sophomore, he’s got some growth. I said, ‘I I I want you to develop the fact that your reactions to shots a aren’t so quick to the the outcome because what it tells me if the if the reaction, which is a negative one or whatever, let’s just, you know, say slams his club in there or whatever. If your reaction is so quick after the shot, then you are bound up emotionally quite a bit in the consequence and in the result, whether the result is the score or whether it was the result of that shot. And we all know it’s a scoring game and the game is an addition of all these separate shots. So, yes, it’s understandable. But if you are um an emotional person that that you kind of have a little bit of fire in the furnace like Joe Enman said, I want I want to see the reaction happen later. And the reason why is because I want to know that the reaction was based on something under your control. So if you hit a putt and it didn’t go in, then you should know right away, well, you should know whether it goes in or not. Did I hit it solidly? Yes or no? It’s a yes or no answer. You know pretty much right away, right? Did I hit it on the line that I meant to that I was guessing was the right line for the ball to go in. And thirdly, did I hit it with the right pace and on the direct right direction so that it was the right read. So basically, I have three concrete yes no answers that I can tell myself. And if if the answer was no, that I lost focus and didn’t trust the read, then go ahead, slap yourself on the hip. you you should be frustrated with yourself about that because it was something under your control. But if your if your reactions are so quick to just the consequence of the ball going in or not, that’s a hard game to win. You know, that’s that’s something that’s it’s difficult to work on that after the round or in between tournaments. But again, what about the effect that it’s got on Mo, Larry, and Curley behind them? Yeah. Right. there’s there’s so many other consequences that you’ve got to, you know, if if you’re getting frustrated because of things that are out of your control, that’s that is something that you’ve got to pay attention to cuz cuz ultimately you can’t work on those things. So, you know, you the only thing you could do is then acknowledge, hey, I’m letting myself getting get frustrated about this player that’s playing slowly in my group. I’m I’m acknowledging that I’m getting frustrated. So now what’s my plan? You know, am I going to laugh about it inside or am I going to say something to the rules official because we’re already all and half behind. You know, have a have a plan rather than just getting frustrated and making poor decisions and then blaming the other player. Blame blaming somebody else. That’s right. Uh what do you think of this? What do you think? I was uh on the golf course a few days ago and I saw a girl who I don’t teach. She was literally 8 yards from the pin chipping and she took out her rangefinder from like literally 8 yards and I I was just like I can’t I can’t like go ahead coach. She teed it up for you. Well, I I here’s here’s the only thing that I have to say about that. Right. The ways of teaching are so different now than they were when we were learning the game. And we I don’t even have to say how old all of us are, right? The reality of it is literally what we thought made the golf ball fly in terms of path and face are upside down. You know, we learned once Trackman and some of these other technological advances, once we learned that the ball starts on its line because of club face and not because of swing path direction, that that changed teaching. And so I I think something that sometimes we as instructors or you know whatever else we have to kind of acknowledge is she and I’m I’m only having this girl’s back cuz I I don’t know anything about her instruction, but if her instructor said, “You know what? When you’ve got a pitch that’s exactly 24 yards long and it’s a perfect lie, I want you to hit it with this trajectory and with this much back swing and with this this much speed going forward. Well, that’s a different way of teaching. That’s that is a Bryson Dshambo, you know, to the inth degree. Um, and and I wouldn’t teach it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not some way that somebody else has some scientific method. Now, that being said, you better be able to punch those numbers into the computer really fast because if you do all that science, at some point you’re taking too long to hit to the golf shot. And so, I I I do think it’s a little bit silly. I’m I’m with you on the rangefinder. Um because the reality of it is that’s just one bit of information and and I’d like to think that if she shot that yardage, she also thought, okay, well, it’s x number of feet or yards away from me. However, I’ve got to land the ball here, it’s got to come down at this trajectory, and it’s going to have to roll at this pace going over. That has nothing to do with the rangefinder. You know, that has to do with creativity and the right side of your brain and you know, those sorts of things. So, I I I’m I’m trying to give credence to the possibility that somebody could be teaching something that’s pretty technologically advanced, but at the same time, there’s the the thing that I love about the game more than anything else, and I have since since I was young, and it doesn’t mean I was always good at it, but I love teaching it, is that you really have to be good at both sides of your brain. And you you’ve got to be good as a creative person, and you’ve got to be good as an analytic person. And you’ve got to be good at knowing when to turn one on and turn one off and when to use one and when to use the other. And one of them might not be particularly sharp. And that’s an area that you know you work on. So I think it’s uh I think it’s I think it’s fair to say that when you get close enough to the green that you can throw the golf ball and get it there, you don’t need a rangefinder. But that’s my opinion. Oh, I like that. I like that. You get close enough that you can throw it on, you don’t need a rangefinder. Correct. Okay. I have nothing to say about that whole segment. Okay. Coach, one last question for Yes. Coach Jamie. Coach Hughes, I want you to ask one last question. Um, how important is it for you to go to a tournament, watch a kid play, and say the person may have an unorthodox swing. Does that ever factor into anything you’re The reason I’m asking this is because I I was very fortunate enough to work for, you know, the guy that had the biggest influence in my career was Jim Fleck. And the one thing he said to me that I think about every single day that I coach golf. Um, if you want to assess a player, don’t go to the driving range, go to the scorers tent. And that kind of falls into what you were saying there a little bit about, am I looking for someone that’s just shooting scores? I can do that on the internet, right? Um, I guess my long- winded way of asking this question is what would make Jamie Green come back from the golf course and say, “I’m going to offer to this kid because I think he’s going to be a duke.” Well, that the first part of your question is the the last part of your question’s got a lot of layers. you know what what does it take for me to make an offer to somebody or to pick that one person out of hundreds to say I want you on the team regardless of scholarship or anything else. That’s there are a lot of things that go into that. That being said, if we’re just talking about golf swing or technique or or um you know standing on the driving range, I’ll I’ll I’ll again I’ll kind of turn it on you a little bit. Um, I understand his point about going to the scorer’s tent. That being said, I would like to be on the driving range, not necessarily to break down somebody’s golf swing and have a video camera on it, but I want to see the golf ball fly. I I want to see, do they hit it high? Do they hit it low? Can they hit it left to right or right to left? If they’ve got to punch it out of the trees, do they even have a motion that could do that? um what do they do on the driving range with their time? You know, do they always have sticks down or do they have sticks down for a little while and then move them away because they realize they don’t have them on the golf course? Um one of the things I I heard a story when I was just out of college and I I I don’t know the name so kind of take this with a shaker of salt. Uh but Jim Furick’s dad apparently most people know Jim Furick. uh even even if you don’t know as a young person much about his his game, go ahead and pull up some videos. But I think he would be the the prototypical are you going to recruit this guy based on his swing or not? And the story that I heard was that Jim Furick’s dad took Jim a young Jim Furick, a high school Jim Furick to a very accomplished swing pro and watched and and just said, “Watch my son hit some balls and tell me what you think.” and he hits a b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b bunch of I don’t know, however many balls, right? Enough balls that you could make an assessment. And the dad turns to the pro and says, “What do you think?” He said, “I’m not touching that swing.” He goes, “What are you talking about? It’s it’s all over the place. I mean, what? You got to have something. You’re one of the best.” He said, “I can cover those golf balls with a blanket. What do I need to work on that golf swing for? The golf ball the golf ball tells me what I need to know.” Now, that’s that goes along with the scorers tent kind of comment. So it’s it you know there’s one thing that I have learned I I guess if there’s something to kind of take away and that’s why I’m looking forward to working with juniors even more than I will had been working with 18 to 22 year olds. Um you know bodies are different ways of swinging the golf club are different ways of holding the golf club are different and there’s I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way. What I do think is that sometimes as instructors or even as players, we tried so hard to fit round pegs into square holes. And you know, it it doesn’t have to be just this way. Now, if if the golf ball’s going all over the place and and you’re hitting it thin and fat and on the toe and on the heel, then yes, you’ve got some things to have to figure out. But if you the way your an your anatomy is or the way that your clubs work with your with your body or the way that you know we’ve probably all taught people that had handicaps of one way or another, right? With with for what whatever reason. And can they play golf and enjoy the game? Absolutely. Um I’ve I’ve now watched I’ve been out here long enough to watch players get recruited who have two gloves. That’s that’s like you couldn’t imagine that. 25 years ago. Oh my gosh, they wear they wear two gloves or people that have their, you know, their lead hand lower than their backhand and we’re talking about players who are playing at the national championship and no, nobody would have done that 25 years ago. So, my answer to your question is I I will be on the driving range, but I’m going to be on the driving range looking at ball flight and I’m going to be on the driving range looking at their practice habits uh both before the round. I want to see how they warm up after the tournament, you know, round is over. How much what are they going to go work on? And then basically just on a practice day, you know, what what are they doing when there’s there’s no tournament to be played? And the what I can learn from those things on the driving range, I I am very much interested in. Very well put, my friend. Wow. No kidding. Well, listen, uh, for our maiden voyage, this was a a home run. I didn’t run home run. The ship isn’t sinking. All right. Good. Good. I got us the flow. Um I we could have touched on a number of topics and talked all night, you and I. But uh Well, I’m I’m really looking forward to to the rest of your guests. I’ I’ve I’ve had the privilege of knowing both of you for over 10 years. Um watched you coach, watched you work at camps, watched you work with junior golfers, watched you talk with parents. I’m I’m thrilled that you asked me to come on. I’m even more thrilled to to watch future podcasts and hear the other coaches and and uh you know see what things they have to say. Well, they’re gonna have to go a long way to better you, my friend. Yeah% to catch up with you. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much. All right. Well, uh anybody else that’s watching this video, um these are the type of guests we’re going to have on here. we make it a vow to uh put somebody out here that’s going to give you good information and help you in the decision that you’re about to make, which is a very important one. So, anything we can do to help out, please let us know. And I will turn it over to my colleague TJ for the final word. Okay. I appreciate both of your guys’ time and your insight with uh both the questions from coach coach Hughes and also the answers from coach Jamie Green was amazing. Thank you all being here. Thank you. Good luck to your show. Have a good night. Bye-bye now. Bye. [Music]
