Unleashed: UW Golf's Maestro of the Mind
May 23, 2012
By Gregg Bell - UW Director of Writing
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SEATTLE -Before the Huskies men's golf team beat No. 1 Texas in the biggest tournament of their season last weekend, they hoarded snacks and played Uno.
Before Washington charged through 30-mile-per-hour winds that were blowing away competitors like tumble weeds across the prairies Saturday, before the Huskies stormed to their third-ever NCAA regional championship in Norman, Okla., UW's golfers roared at Matt Thurmond going out looking like a mutated Dippin' Dot.
Thurmond took the team to dinner wearing a hot-pink polo shirt over his favorite pair of bright green running shorts.
“The nice kind, too, the ones with the inside, mesh lining,” Thurmond said, still admiring his ridiculous trunks.
On the eve of wondrous Chris Williams joining Richard Lee in 2010 as the only Husky golfers to win an NCAA regional, Thurmond took his junior ace around the Oklahoma University campus. The coach posted on his Twitter page comical photos of Williams wearing a SuperSonics T-shirt in front of trophy-case presentations of big OU donor Clay Bennett – yes, that Clay Bennett, the owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder that stole the NBA team from Seattle in 2008.
And get this: A couple times last week, Thurmond’s Huskies actually turned off their cell phones during team meals, to bond even more. No texting. No Twitter. No kidding.
“I mean, those things right there, the way he wore stupid things, he’s always been like that, keeping it chill,” Williams told me over the phone Tuesday morning, before another day of practice in the rain to get even better following his school-record sixth career win.
“He really has a calming aspect to him. All the guys felt that in Oklahoma. I know I felt that.”
The Huskies have Williams and Pan ranked among the world’s top 13 amateurs. They have talented, relentless Charlie Hughes liable to break into sustained greatness at any moment. They have skill that rivals any program around.
They also have "Coach Thurm." He's a huge reason the ultra-talented Huskies put it all together last weekend. He and his innovative, creative ways have Washington surging into its quest for its first NCAA championship next week at the fabled Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif.
He is the envy of collegiate golf, the maestro of the mind that puts UW in better position mentally than any team swinging a club.
And this deep into a season, with national titles at stake in this often lonely, unforgiving game, golf is all mental.
"Of all the things you do as a coach, the number-one thing I try to do is the build the team's and the individual's self-esteem such that they feel comfortable to (excel) when the time comes," a characteristically relaxed Thurmond said Monday at the Husky Golf Center inside Alaska Airlines Arena.
"Frankly, I wasn't sure I had done a good enough job of that this year. So it was really gratifying."
As sure as Sam Snead that the Huskies are talented, Washington's competitors also notice how much fun Thurmond's Huskies are having.
Last weekend, the golfers from Texas, Oklahoma, from Illinois, Florida State, and Georgia Tech marveled at the zany dudes from Washington. The rivals all saw the coach in the radioactive pink-over-green get-up leaving the hotel and leading his guys out to dinner.
They heard Thurmond had taken his golfers20 miles from Norman to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, where bomber Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people at a federal building in 1995.
They knew the Huskies were bonding through evening card games and movies; Thurmond also took the team to see The Avengers, in 3D.
And the jealous foes wanted to know more.
"Yeah, they were always asking us, `What did you do last night? What are you doing tonight?'" Williams said.
"I know a lot of teams wish they were doing what we do, having the fun we have."
That's the thing about golf: You are never at your best
What did that fun create? The Huskies went out in a stiff wind and seized the team lead Friday in a second round that was their best day of the season. In the gales the next day No. 12-seed Georgia Tech, seeded one spot ahead of UW in the regional, blew up at 19 over par. Early leader Florida State went 12 over. But Williams, Pan, Hughes, Trevor Simsby, and Ty Chambersheld their lead, overcame double- and triple-bogeys and held off the top-ranked Longhorns plus the host Sooners -- even though both had played on that OU course and in those dust-up conditions far more than UW had.
"That's the thing about golf: You are never at your best," Thurmond said. "It's more about managing the failure than having a peak performance.
"You can't cram any skill development in at this point. Even this week, after we've advanced, it's not like I am going to put in a new offense or a bunch of new plays. There's not much we can do. It's been done. We are what we are.
"It's a matter now of preparing your mind to be as good as you can be."
The Huskies' minds are as well as they've been in years right now.
They are coming off their biggest and best-timed win of a previously unfulfilled season. Ever since they blew a late lead to tie for first instead at the Bandon Dunes Championship on the Oregon coast two months ago, the Huskies had not played consistently. Their results hadn't matched their talent.
Until Oklahoma.
"We were flawless mentally last week," Thurmond said. "As far as the focus that it takes and the attention to detail and the level of preparation, we were 10 out of 10. And I hadn't seen that.
"That's what I can control. That's what we can control. The scores, often you can't control that. But as far as what we bring to it, you can control that. And I thought it was the first time we've done that all year."
Wonder why?
"What I am trying to do the whole time - when I wear the funny outfits or do some of that stuff - is I want them to feel like, `We've got it all under control. And if the coach is so relaxed that he can go out on the town looking like that, then we've got nothing to lose,'" Thurmond says.
"It's creating an environment where we are comfortable and relaxed and we've got everything under control."
BOOGIE BOARDING, RAPPELLING, BLOGGING - AND WINNING
Thing is, it's not all just fun and games with Thurmond. The Brigham Young graduate obviously knows a thing or three about how to teach the finer points of his ridiculously difficult sport.
He has led the most successful stretch of golf in Washington's history. UW has now advanced to the NCAA championships in nine of his 11 years as coach, and has finished in the top 11 nationally each of those previous eight finals appearances.
The Huskies have won the conference championship three times under Thurmond. Before he took over in 2001 Washington hadn't won the Pac-10 since 1988. He has twice been coach of the year in college golf's toughest conference.
I know a lot of teams wish they were doing what we do, having the fun we have.
Huskies have been named as All-Americans 17 times in Thurmond's 11 seasons since he was promoted at age 26 to the head job at Washington when O.D. Vincentresigned to pursue a professional golf career.
In 2010, Nick Taylor won the Ben Hogan Award as the nation's best collegiate golfer. In 2005, James Lepp won the NCAA individual championship. Last year Williams, UW's only winner of the conference's freshman-of-the-year award, joined Brock Mackenzieas the only Huskies ever to play in the prestigious Palmer Cup competition between collegians from the United States and Europe.
As last weekend in Oklahoma shows, a huge part of Thurmond's success comes from the fact his coaching doesn't end at the course.
For years he's been writing regular e-newsletters to his program's hundreds of friends and followers. He is currently penning an almost daily diary of UW's postseason run at RoadToRiviera.com.
After becoming a four-year golf letter winner at BYU, Thurmond graduated with an English degree. He has his own blog. On it, he answers questions from recruits, families and fans while discussing topics that may or may not be related to golf.
Entering Mother's Day he wrote, unsolicited, "Nothing tells me more about the character of a recruit than how they treat and speak of their mother."
His admitted on his Twitter page this week to adding an Eddie Money channel on his Pandora account. The husband of two-time Western Athletic Conference champion triple-jumper Kathy Sorenson -- they have three daughters, Elizabeth, Emily and Hinckley - Thurmond also maintains huskygolfblog.com.
Williams told me last year the reason he came turned down perfect-climate golf schools in the Southern California as a title-winning prep golfer in his native Idaho was because of Thurmond. Because of how "real" the coach is. And after three years with Thurmond teaching him, Williams is now regarded one of the best ball strikers in the country.
Pan, the freshman phenom, says Thurmond is the main reason he left Taiwan and signed with UW last year.
"He's really cool," Pan said Monday while working on his putting indoors on a supposed off day. "I mean, golf is important, but it's not my whole life. And it's not his whole life, either. He likes to have fun."
I asked Pan what he's learned from Thurmond. He mentioned he's already a far better putter thanks to the coaching, and is still getting better.
Then he smiled.
"I've learned how to play cribbage. Uno," he said. "And Puerto Rico, the board game."
Pan says the highlight of his first year as a Husky wasn't winning his second college tournament in October, The Prestige in La Quinta, Calif. It wasn't necessarily the Huskies winning the NCAA regional, either.
It was at the University of Hawai'i Invitational in February. But it was far off the course. After a long day of golf, Thurmond led his team already renowned for packing boogie boards to tournaments on the Islands up a coastal mountain trail and down a sheer rock face. He didn't tell them where they were going. They just kept following.
That's when Pan did rock rappelling for the first time.
"That was pretty cool," he said. "Then we went to a secret place, some hidden cove. We were the only ones there. This was right after playing golf all day.
"That's one of the coolest trips I've had."
"THEY NOW KNOW WHAT IT TAKES"
Thurmond says Williams' low, precise, laser-like drives are why he soared to victory in Oklahoma's gales last weekend.
Williams credits his coach.
"The weather was awful," Williams said. "With the wind blowing like that and so many players struggling it's really more that you've got to control your mind. You can't control everything. You can't control where the ball is going to go in wind like that. But the one thing you can control is your mind."
Friday, Williams sank a 75-foot putt for eagle on 18. Saturday on the same hole, he used an 8-iron from 205 yards out to send the ball through the wind to within seven feet of the hole. That set up the winning eagle.
The junior All-American credits Thurmond for those two shots, for those two rounds.
"He really helped me think about things I don't normally think about," Williams said.
Between practicing through Seattle's brutal winter to rounds in the rain less than 48 hours after winning an NCAA regional - as he did Monday in a downpour at Seattle Golf Club -- Williams probably plays golf more often than you and I brush our teeth. He plays so much he says he doesn't always think completely through each of his shots, about nuances such as where the wind might take the ball and where he wants his next shot to be.
Thurmond, standing next to him on every fairway and green in Oklahoma, had him doing that last weekend. Now Williams - and the other Huskies in the five-count-four format of the NCAA tournament -- have added sharper shot assessments to their games in time for the national championship.
They walked away from Norman exhausted physically and mentally, yet as hardened and confident titlists.
"They now know what it takes," Thurmond said.
If this team ends up winning the national championship, we will look back and say we had to do that.
"If this team ends up winning the national championship, we will look back and say we had to do that. We had to win the regionals to show we could do it here," the coach says of next week at Riviera.
Heck, as Pan said Monday: "I mean, we just beat the No.-1 seed, Texas. So obviously we can beat anybody."
Thurmond will go with the same five at Riviera that he had in Oklahoma, beginning with Monday's practice round. The Huskies are seeded eighth for the three rounds of stroke play Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The teams with the eight lowest scores after those rounds enter match play next Friday, Saturday and Sunday to compete for the national team and individual championships.
Thurmond thinks if his Huskies play like they did in Oklahoma, they will finish in the top eight at Riviera and qualify for the anything-can-happen match-play rounds.
If they do it, if Washington wins its first national title, it will be because "Coach Thurm" made it fun. Yet again.
I asked what he has in store for the Huskies next week.
"I don't know, I haven't thought about it yet," he said.
His coy smile suggested otherwise.
He did say the team was spending the week in Santa Monica. What are the chances there will be Huskies on the solar-powered Ferris wheel and coasters at the Santa Monica Pier, eh?
"I know the Angels are playing the Yankees the Wednesday night, after our second round," UW's choreographer of wins and fun said.
"We might go to that."
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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