Teachings of golf coach Chris Haack spell success

The architect of the reigning collegiate golf factory got off to a perfect start – if by perfect you mean like the dubious performance by the Brooklyn Dodgers’ batting lineup against Don Larsen in the 1956 World Series.

“We were 0-7 out of the gate,” Chris Haack said of blue-chip recruiting targets he went after upon his arrival as the University of Georgia’s golf coach in 1996.

Haack had accepted his first and only coaching job in July, but naively waited until Sept. 1 to get started after captaining his final Canon Cup team in August. Turns out the most-sought-after golfers in the country – Charles Howell, John Engler, Bryce Molder, Scott Volpitto, Brian Scurlock – didn’t wait for him to settle in.

“In recruiting circles that’s an eternity that I gave up summer,” Haack said. “We were just too late in the recruiting process and consequently got shut out on all of those guys.”

Even after 16 years getting to know the country’s best junior golfers as the tournament director of the American Junior Golf Association, Haack didn’t have any coaching track record to inspire confidence in recruits. Georgia was a nice program that had produced a lineage of amateur stars like Vinny Giles and a handful of reasonably successful tour pros like Chip Beck, Billy Kratzert and Tim Simpson. But it wasn’t noted for churning out bankable pros in droves like Oklahoma State, Florida and Texas.

That message was clear from one of the targets Haack was most confident he’d land. When Engler – who had been coached at Richmond Academy by Haack’s new assistant Jim Douglas – called on signing day and told Haack he was going to Clemson instead, the jilted coach asked why.

“I just feel they’ve got a better chance of winning a national championship than you because you’re not going to be able to do it quick enough,” Engler told him.

Haack’s junior roots, however, ended up paying off despite the stinging list of rejections. His relationship allowed him to convince former AJGA player of the year Ryuji Imada to give college a chance instead of turning pro. Players who knew and trusted him – Nick Cassini and Michael Morrison – opted to transfer out of unsatisfying situations to Georgia. Those three, along with inherited talent in Mark Northey and Jeremy Parrott, won the school’s first of two NCAA titles in 1999 – beating Howell’s Oklahoma State team and Engler’s Clemson squad that were both laden with future PGA Tour stars.

“Missed out on some guys but got some pretty good others,” Haack said.

Suddenly, talent started rolling through Athens in consistent waves. His 2001 squad – the only team in NCAA history to have five players make at least third-team all-American – was so deep that Bubba Watson didn’t play the entire year.

“Ryuji really started our program,” said Erik Compton, Haack’s second prominent recruit. “He was the first guy that Haacker got in there and you were like, ‘OK,’ because he was all-world. … After that, you had all these kids coming in who were just better players – big strong guys with a lot of talent. It speaks volumes to Haacker’s ability to pick great players.”

The Bulldogs won a second national title in 2005 with current tour pros Chris Kirk, Brendon Todd and Kevin Kisner in the lineup. UGA’s runner-up squad in 2011 boasted three tour pros, including two (Russell Henley and Harris English) who had already won professional tournaments as amateurs.

Haack’s former players have amassed 15 PGA Tour and 17 Web.com Tour victories since 2000. Six will tee it up at this year’s Masters. Most of them haven’t even reached their prime.

Haack’s ring tone asks “Who let the dogs out?” The answer picks up the phone.

“I wish I could tell you the magic formula because I’m sure there’s some luck in there,” Haack said.

HAACK’S WINNING FORMULA is an unbroken lifetime spent involved with young golfers.

He traces his AJGA roots back to when the “A” stood for Atlanta instead of American. The organization started in DeKalb County by local sports writer Mike Bentley, who would sit on the first tee with a pitcher of iced tea taking $3 entry fees and sending groups out once he got enough for a foursome. Bentley would engrave plaques on the 18th hole.

It expanded across Atlanta while Haack was playing in high school at Newnan. During Haack’s senior year in 1978, Bentley decided to hold one national tournament at Inverrary Country Club in Florida. Haack was invited to compete with Willie Wood, Mark Brooks and Andrew Magee.

“I remember playing that event thinking it was the biggest event I ever imagined – 120 guys,” Haack said. “I played as good as I could possibly play and had never seen that many sand traps. I just played my butt off and shot 73 and thought, ‘Dude, I’m going to be winning this thing.’ Got in and saw Wood and Brooks had shot 66 and I was in 28th place. That’s when I realized this wasn’t the game for me.”

While he went to college at West Georgia, Haack spent his summers and Thanksgiving break helping Bentley run the Atlanta Junior Golf Association. Before Haack graduated, Bentley decided to turn the Atlanta organization over to Puggy Blackmon and establish the American Junior Golf Association. Haack tagged along.

“I thought it was the greatest thing in the world,” Haack said. “At the time we had three events. It was me and Mike and a volunteer secretary (Bob Tway’s mom) and we just ventured out and started growing.”

Not much older than the who’s who collection of juniors playing in the events, Haack was one of the guys. During a pool party at the Future Legends team event at Onion Creek in Austin, Texas, players were throwing each other into the water. The youngest kid there was 14-year-old Billy Mayfair. Haack, naturally, tossed Mayfair into the kiddie pool.

“All the best players from around the country were all of the sudden meeting each other and playing in all these big events and that’s what it kind of grew from,” Haack said. “The next year we had seven events then it grew to 12. But it was always the best players from around the country getting together.”

AS TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR, Haack was the one sifting through all the player résumés and sending out invitations. There weren’t many NCAA restrictions in the early days, and only one college coach consistently showed up to events – Mike Holder of Oklahoma State.

“He’d say, ‘Haacker, who are the best players down here?’ ” Haack said of Holder. “I’d tell them to check these guys out because I knew all the kids, all the résumés and all the families. The only two coaches I ever talked to were Mike Holder, who would show up, and Dick Copas, because I was a Georgia fan and I’d call him up and tell him to check a kid out.”

Haack’s favorite event was the Canon Cup, which pitted 10-player teams from the East and West in a Ryder Cup-style competition. For seven years, Haack captained the West squad against AJGA executive director Steve Hamblin and the East. His first four teams included Tiger Woods.

“That was my first experience being around a bunch of kids and pairing them and all that kind of stuff,” Haack said.

It was captaining for and against the likes of Woods, Charles Howell, Chris Riley and Jason Gore on those Canon Cup teams that piqued Haack’s interest in coaching. He mentioned to former Georgia player Jack Larkin that if longtime golf coach Copas ever retired, he’d be interested in applying for the job. When Copas retired in 1996 after 25 years, Larkin called Haack to see whether he remembered the earlier conversation and was still interested.

So after 16 years with the AJGA, Haack came to Athens in 1996.

THE BASIC TENET of Haack’s coaching philosophy was gleaned from his experience with juniors. The Thanksgiving tournament he ran at Innisbrook every year always had a dozen or more collegiate freshmen who were still age eligible. Haack enjoyed catching up with each of them and hearing about their experiences.

“It was almost a common theme among all those kids that (college) wasn’t what it was cracked up to be,” Haack said. “ ‘Coach wasn’t who I thought he was. I’m outplaying this guy but he’s playing him anyway.’ My whole thought was, you’ll never know what you’ve got unless you just throw them out there and the easiest thing to do is throw them out there and let them qualify and whoever shoots low goes. So we just always had that mind-set. You sink or swim. If you can play, prove it.”

At Georgia, Haack quickly understood to let his players determine how they want to prepare. He follows a coaching philosophy of doing no harm.

“As bad as you want to jump in there because you see this or that, you’re better off leaving them alone unless they come and ask,” Haack said of swing advice. “Kids today are learning so much more about their own golf swings, they can figure it out better than I can.”

Haack gives them free rein to practice how they see fit. Compton could work the range and never hit his own clubs. Kirk would putt in flip-flops while Hudson Swafford beat hundreds of range balls. Henley wanted to just play and compete.

“One of the things I learned early on is that everybody is different and has different ways of motivating themselves, so I never was much for putting everybody in a cookie-cutter,” Haack said. “As long as you perform, that’s all that really matters. So I was always pretty flexible as long as it worked for them and they were shooting the numbers. The one common denominator of separation was qualifying. Figure out how you want to do it, but we’re going to go out here and qualify and low-five guys are going.”

As logical as the concept seems, it isn’t universally applied at other schools. Some coaches will guarantee certain players a spot in the lineup. But at Georgia there are no guarantees. Unless you finished top 10 in the previous tournament, you had to play for your spot every week.

“It either motivated you to work harder so you wouldn’t be in that position again or you became a bad apple of attitude,” Haack said. “Generally for the best players, it motivated them.”

Qualifying didn’t just take place on the UGA course but required multiple rounds at various venues.

“Played a bunch of different golf courses in bad conditions – it was tough,” Harman said. “I think part of that was them trying to groom us to get ready for Q School. All that helped for sure.”

Only three guys who played four seasons for Haack had perfect qualifying records – Harman, Henley and Kisner. Imada never missed in his two seasons. Nick Cassini swept his way through three years.

Everybody else sat at least once. Some chafed under the demand and strain of constant competition. Watson resented the process and let it affect him. Blake Adams stressed about it and sought to transfer to Georgia Southern, and Haack made one call to get him in.

“If he wanted to make sure he was playing college golf, I couldn’t guarantee him that,” Haack said of Adams. “He had to go earn that. He finally came and said he wanted to go somewhere else. It turned out to be really good for Blake. He was a guy who really needed to be playing to get good. If he’d stayed here and played some and been out a bunch, who knows? He might not have been as good.”

Most players, however, relished the open opportunities that mirror the merit system of the PGA Tour. The process only made them sharper under duress.

“When they were here they were ultra competitive,” Haack said. “That’s probably one of the reasons they all turned out so good. They didn’t like losing to those other guys and would go at it tooth and nail.”

Qualifying usually consists of three or four rounds, but on some quick-turnaround weeks it might be a one-day shootout.

“If anybody said that was not fair, we’d say, ‘Wait a minute,’ ” Haack explained. “ ‘You do that for the U.S. Open or U.S. Amateur, and that’s for three spots out of 100 guys. This is five out of 10. The odds are pretty good, so quit complaining.’ ”

The system paid off when they were ready to transition as pros. Three years ago at the final stage of PGA Tour Q School in Palm Springs, Calif., Haack got a group text with English, Harman, Todd, Kisner, Swafford and Richard Scott.

“They sent us a picture of them all on the range together with bags and headcovers lined up,” Haack said. “Caption said something like, ‘It looks like qualifying at UGA.’ ”

Not surprisingly, four of the six earned their cards, including his perfect qualifiers Harman and Kisner.

IF THERE’S A third pillar of Haack’s philosophy it’s to have fun and be college students. They play cards on the van and take annual trips to Little River Plantation without clubs to shoot skeet or fish and just generally “hoot and holler.”

“I do think that these guys have fun when they’re here,” Haack said. “I do think there is an element of burnout in college for some guys because it can be such a grind. But we’ve always kept it fun.”

The only rule he has is for players to not join a fraternity their first year, as he did at West Georgia.

“I’m not anti-fraternity,” Haack said. “But I always tell them when it comes to school and golf and fraternity, all three take an enormous amount of time. Your first year, let’s just worry about school and golf. At the end of that first year, if you think that you’ve got so much extra time on your plate that you can do the fraternity, we’ll talk about it. I’ve never had anybody come back and say they’ve got extra time.”

Consequently, the golf team’s clubhouse at UGA Golf Course ends up being the fraternity house. Players hang out whenever they’re not in class or practicing, often sitting in the coach’s office shooting the breeze with Haack and Douglas.

“If I told all my guys not to come out here today, they’d still come out because this is where they want to hang out,” Haack said.

At age 54, Haack is still as playful with his kids as he was when he was throwing Mayfair in the kiddie pool at the AJGA.

“It takes a special guy to be able to deal with 18-year-olds who’ve been told how good they are for their whole lives,” Harman said. “He’s done a great job of managing that. Jim Douglas as well. They keep guys grounded. It’s hard to imagine either one of those guys helping somebody grow up, but they do.”

Even disciplining them has an element of sport to it.

“If a guy throws a club or curses, my deal is the whole team gets punished and has to run,” Haack said. “I remember (Kisner) cussed in front of his mom. She ratted him out and he said, ‘Dang, Mom, you got the whole team in trouble.’ ”

They all pay in a system they call “530s” for the predawn time when punishment is meted out. No two 530s are ever the same – perhaps running laps on the track or steps in Stegeman Coliseum. The drills are tough enough that current Bulldog Lee “Sherm” McCoy politely announced he was going to go vomit and then returned to the stationary bike. English once laid down after 530s like a dead horse, prompting a photo-shopped picture that still hangs on the locker room bulletin board.

But Haack always offers a loophole to cut the punishment short. He once took the four fastest players on the team – Henley, Harman, Adam Mitchell and Rob Bennett – and had them each run a relay lap to see if they could break a four-minute mile.

“They did it in 4:20,” Haack said. “It gave them a pretty good appreciation for the guys who could do that by themselves.”

After Mitchell tossed a club in competition, Haack made him sit in a chair reading the school newspaper while his teammates were in the other end of the weight room riding bikes and glaring at him. When they finished the bikes, they had to sit along the wall around Mitchell’s chair while Haack quizzed Mitchell about things in the paper. Every time he missed a question – as simple as who won the Braves game the night before – they had to do another sit-up.

“It took him like nine questions to get one right and they’re all yelling at him,” Haack said.

After running coliseum steps in perfect sync (or they had to start over), Haack ordered suicide runs on the basketball court until Canadian Richard Scott could make a free throw.

“They’re like, ‘Not him! He’s never played,’ ” Haack said. “Well, he made it and they lifted him up like he was king.”

Another time he offered team immunity if anybody could sing The Star-Spangled Banner.

“Brendon Todd tried it and absolutely butchered the hell out of it,” Haack laughed. “But it was such a great effort I went ahead and let them go.”

It’s the kind of collegial bonding that makes them Bulldogs for life. Players routinely return to Athens and play rounds and putting contests with the current team. When a new grad gets an exemption into a PGA Tour event, Haack texts his “boys” to take care of him and they oblige with practice rounds and friendly introductions.

With UGA planning a renovation of its golf facilities, every one of Haack’s touring pros has offered to help fund it.

“When all the older guys come back it’s like having kids,” Haack said.

It’s the only coaching job Haack ever plans to have as long as he can keep relating to the kids he brings in and turns out ready for the next level.

“I think to myself how much longer I want to do this but I don’t see any reason to slow down,” he said. “We’re doing exactly what we want to be doing and it’s keeping me young being around young guys and watching them grow up. We want it to be fun for us, too, and as long as it’s fun …”