Gregg Bell Unleashed: Williams, Hughes and the Uniqueness that is Huskies Golf
March 30, 2011
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SEATTLE - Coach Matt Thurmond wrote a letter to supporters of his Huskies men's golf program in February. I read it while on a trip with the basketball team, and I've been thinking about it since.
Thurmond, an English major at Brigham Young about a dozen years ago, eloquently wrote about the unique skills and even more unique bond possessed by UW sophomore golfers Chris Williams and Charlie Hughes.
"They are two of the finest young men any of us will come across," Thurmond wrote.
The letter told me how special Williams and Hughes are and may still become. It also told me how special a coach Thurmond is, and how unique his Huskies program is in college golf.
Thurmond wrote the pair "may eventually go down as the greatest duo in our program's history."
For a championship team with years of world-class talent, one that just had Nick Taylor, the world's No. 1 ranked amateur and 2010 Ben Hogan Award winner, plus Richard Lee depart, that's saying something.
"While driving from Chattanooga to the Atlanta Airport after last year's NCAA Championship and reflecting on the ending of a special era I spoke with Richard and Nick about how much the program and I would miss them," Thurmond wrote in one of the letters he sends to about 130 donors to his program after every Huskies tournament. "They both responded saying, `You'll be fine. You have Willy (Chris Williams) and Chaz (Charlie Hughes). They will be better than us.' This was quite an endorsement from Nick and Richard and they did not give it idly.
"They meant it. They may be right."
I mean, what coach of a big-time college program takes time to write a letter to outsiders that is so open, with such sincerity - while in the middle of his season?
"I write that for guys who may have their own kids," Thurmond told me Tuesday inside the impressive Husky Golf Center he had carved into the south side of Alaska Airlines Arena two years ago. "I like doing that. It's one of my strengths, and I like doing it a lot in my coaching. I love to sit down and think about things and write about them to communicate to people who are at a distance. It feels intimate, but it's just me in my office.
"It's easy for me."
His special duo has each won Washington's last two golf tournaments, Hughes with his first career title at Bandon Dunes on the Oregon Coast and Williams in his third career championship at the Oregon Duck Invitational in Eugene last week. Both are aiming for pro careers after they get their UW degrees in two years.
They both arrived at UW 18 months ago not knowing each other. Now, they live together, room together on the road, eat together -- everything together.
And, as of this month, win together.
"There's a bond between them that's almost greater than friendship," Thurmond says.
Thurmond's belief, as he stated in that letter, is that the truly elite are lonely in their dedication and work ethic.
That's how Williams, a breezy conversationalist with sandy blonde hair almost to his shoulders, and Hughes, a more measured thinker and talker with dark hair closely cut, found each other, otherwise alone in their supreme commitment to excel.
Williams says he began golfing when he was four. His father Varnel, a horticulturist for the city of Pullman, Wash., "gave me a short little putter and said, `Well, here's the hole. Here's the ball. Get it in the hole.'"
By six, Williams was playing 18-hole courses. After a five-year hiatus starting at age 9 when he chose baseball and ditched golf because he said it was "boring, too slow," he returned to the game. His brother Pete, 10 years older and a former golfer for the University of Idaho, tutored him.
He became a four-time state champion and four-time North Idaho golfer of the year at Moscow High School. He finished third at the 2008 Junior World Championships.
Asked if he always wanted to be a Husky he says with a straight face, "No, I wanted to play somewhere in warm weather. And I could have."
Yet he turned down scholarships to the University of San Diego, San Diego State, UNLV and Coastal Carolina. He had clicked instantly with Thurmond, when he met him while playing in a junior tournament in San Diego as a high schooler.
Yes, Thurmond apparently has the power to offset Mother Nature.
"It was just his personality. He's laid back. I mean, we all love to golf, but with him it's also about fun," Williams says. "With a lot of the other coaches it's all golf. You know, `We practice all the time. If we have a bad round, we will stick around and work on things, hit balls.' With Matt it's, `You have a bad round, let's shake it off, maybe work on things a little bit but then go have fun and get your mind off it. Go relax.'
"It's college golf. It's supposed to be fun. These are the best times of your life. We have the most fun of any team -- really. I like that a lot."
When the Huskies went on a midwinter retreat to Moclips on the Washington coast at the edge of the Quinault Indian reservation, they played countless games of Balderdash, the bluffing and trivia contest. When they began their spring season in the Ameri Ari Invitational in Hawaii in early February, they had boogie boards shipped over with them. They play intense games of Monopoly on every team trip.
"In Hawaii, for example, I know we were always the first ones to leave the coach and hit the ocean," Williams said. "We were the only team that actually shipped over boogie boards. For all of us. At Pac-10s last year in Phoenix, we immediately went go-kart racing right after a round.
"I've talked to many of the guys (on other Pac-10 teams), and they are very jealous of the fun we have. It's awesome. It keeps it fun and relaxed. Matt's a guy you want to play for. He's there to make you better."
If Williams is the prodigy, Hughes is the project. He played basketball and volleyball and snowboarded with his high school buddies outside Vancouver more than he golfed. He wrote Thurmond a letter because he wanted to come to UW for its education and maybe to be on the golf team.
"The most appealing thing to me about Washington was its business school," Hughes says.
But when Thurmond went to see this unknown Hughes play "I was blown away," the coach says. Within a month of Hughes visiting campus, he had committed to sign with UW.
They didn't know each other then, but months later Williams and Hughes were inseparable.
It's a bond forged on good, old-fashioned hard work - work that could only have occurred in the Northwest.
Sun and serenity? Leave that soft stuff for the Golf Channel or the posh country clubs down south. These two natives of Moscow, Idaho, and Maple Ridge, British Columbia, outside Vancouver have spent countless practice rounds swinging in the dark, the ice, the rain and the wind while at UW.
They bonded during the winter of their freshmen seasons last year, the supposed offseason for every other college golfer. Seeing it as their only hope to break into UW's deep, five-man starting rotation led by Taylor and Lee, Williams and Hughes simply outworked everyone else. Maybe in the country, given what they battled to play 18. Or 36. Or 54.
They'd leave campus after classes to get to Broadmoor Golf Club or the Seattle Golf Club and play until dark. On weekends, they'd leave before dawn to Washington National 45 minutes away in suburban Auburn. Wherever, whenever, they'd play round upon round together until dark. Just the two of them, on their own in the sideways rain and pelting ice and wind.
Some days were like Bill Murray's lightning-and-monsoon scene in Caddyshack - "I don't think the heavy stuff will come down for a while." Only with a parka.
"A few times we got stuck in some pretty bad storms," Williams says, chuckling.
"That winter of the freshman year, the weather was bad. No one wanted to go out. But I just had this urge to play every day, and Charlie did, too. So every day we went out together, played until dark. We were wet, cold.
"It just kind of built from there."
Williams went from beginning his UW career home on the bench while the team was away at tournaments to becoming the first Husky to ever win Pac-10 freshmen golfer of the year by that spring.
Hughes' rise was even sharper. He had some top-10 finishes last year as the fifth man in the five-man event lineups, yet spent most of his freshman season consumed by worry over his studies. Thurmond knew he had a rare talent, but one that lacked a total commitment to golf.
Then he took Hughes and another Husky on a hike up Mount Si east of Seattle in October. On the trek, Thurmond told Hughes he hoped he committed more to golf because he felt Hughes had the talent to be a professional in the sport. Stunned, the introspective Hughes absorbed that for about 20 minutes and then asked his coach, "What did you mean by that?"
They kept talking over the next few weeks. By the holidays, Hughes had decided he would spend the extra half hour he used to study on the putting green instead.
"It changed everything," Hughes said.
Everything Hughes does, he does hard -- "He's borderline self-abusive," Thurmond says. So it's no wonder the added emphasis on golf has resulted in dramatically improved results. He shot a team-best 67 in the final round at that first spring tournament in Hawaii, days before Thurmond typed his letter. Hughes has improved so quickly that now, after his first career win at Bandon Dunes this month, his new life goal is the immaculate courses, the finest gear and the white-collar life of professional golf.
And Thurmond says it's a realistic aim for Hughes -- just like for Williams.
"I'd say it's an appealing lifestyle," Hughes deadpans. "But I had never considered it - and I'd say that is fairly unique among college golfers."
So is their work ethic.
This weekend the Huskies play around the corner from famed Augusta National - home of next week's Masters - in an invitational hosted by defending national champion Augusta State in Georgia. Four days before that event, Hughes is standing on the second floor of the Husky Golf Center. He is pointing out the windows toward clouds that are ominous.
"Perfect golfing weather," Hughes says.
He then turns to Williams. The teammates then head out for their umpteenth practice round together.
Of course it poured an hour or so later Tuesday afternoon. And Williams and Hughes were out in it, driving, pitching and putting.
Of course they were.
About Gregg Bell Gregg Bell is an award-winning sports writer who joined the University of Washington's staff in September 2010 as the Director of Writing. Previously, Bell served as the senior national sports writer in Seattle for The Associated Press. The native of Steubenville, Ohio, is a 1993 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He received a master's degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000.
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