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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.