We all know about the 16 national championships, but other stats make Williams’ tenure even more impressive:
“From 1956-1972, the Cougars won the title or finished runner-up in 15 of the 17 years, an impressive feat for a university that did not compete in intercollegiate athletics until 1946 and didn’t even have a home course.”
“Overall, UH finished among the top 3 in 25 of Williams’ 36 seasons.”
Houston’s run of 16 championships in college golf remains unmatched
Would be awesome if we could get back to that.
For reference, Okie State won NCAAs today. In the last 12 months they’ve spent $35M on their golf program. We haven’t spent $35M in the last 40 years on our program.
How about reaching out to the golf alumni pros, to see if they could lead a fundraising effort?
Yep lots has changed since Dave was hauling around the team in his station wagon.
There will never be another Dave Williams!
An amazing record…so regretful we couldn’t keep the magic
going or at least invested in the gem of the program that was so stellar.
And I don’t know if it was Dave had such a great knack for recruiting or
ability to coach or combination of things…
In that era of college athletics the university administration
almost despised supporting athletics. Despised may be too strong a word …
but the admin was lukewarm at best in support provided.
Incredible with what little Yeoman, Lewis, and Williams had to work with.
The dome was a recruiting advantage Yeoman had for awhile before newness and novelty wore off. And basketball was rewarded with Hof Pavilion which was pretty
nice at first in its day. But Williams had almost nothing comparable to work with. It was all him.
Should probably acknowledge what Tom Tellez accomplished too. Amazing what
having the right guy can be done. Rice had that for awhile too with Wayne
Graham in baseball, but they are nothing now.
We host a fundraiser every year after the Champions Tour event in The Woodlands and it raises a decent amount of money, but we are no where close. Our program is self-funded and it’s tough to raise millions and millions to compete.
Bad coaching hires after Dave left.
Dave was the best. He also didn’t have scholarship limits, so he’d sign the best juniors and the best junior college players in Texas and then sit them on the bench. He wasn’t going to let them go elsewhere and beat him.
Times have changed (obviously)
Call Fred Couples and Elkington and convince them that we want to get the program back to that level. I mean there has to be more that they can do. Also, maybe they could move to the Astros golf facility at Memorial Park. There have to be some fresh ideas than what they have been doing.
Elkington wasn’t involved at all when I played and only got involved when his son was on the team.
Call Jim Nantz and get him involved. Call Renu and get her serious about golf. There have to be some different things that they can try.
Dave will always hold a special place in my heart.’
I remember interviewing him when I was new at the Daily Cougar.
A few days later he called my house and asked if I could use a few extra bucks working as a scorekeeper at the AAII golf tourney.
And Lord knows I did need every penny I could scrape up!
Long story short he picked me up every day in that legendary station wagon of his, preached to me to and fro.
By the end of that tourney he had me thinking I could have won that tourney, and I never played anything beyond put-put golf at that time or since.
He was perhaps the most inspirational person I ever met.
He believed in me more than I did.
There will never be another like him!
Very cool story; thanks for sharing.
Stories like this should be keep somewhere in
our Story Legends topic… Maybe Ryan has something like this on the paid site ?
Edit- I see now we have a Classic Stories board
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