Dave Williams is known as the father of college golf. The legendary University of Houston golf coach won 16 national titles at UH literally wrote the book on coaching major college golf.
He lived such a monumental life that his obituary appeared in the New York Times, a rarity for a little-followed sport like college golf. Coach Dave passed away on this date in 1998.
25 of his teams finished in the top 3 nationally. Beyond the 16 national titles, Coach Williams’ teams finished 2nd in the country 5 times and 3rd 4 times.
Due to his unparalleled success, the Golf Coaches Association of America named its Coach of the Year award after Dave Williams. But the GCAA went even further: the Dave Williams Award is given to a coach in each of the six levels of collegiate golf (Division I, II, III, NAIA, NJCAA, and NJCAA Division II). No other sport has ever named an award at every level after one person.
Dave Williams was born in East Texas and attended East Texas State before earning master’s degrees in both chemistry and chemical engineering. He served in the Navy during WW2 and reached the rank of lieutenant. After the war, Williams joined the faculty of the UH engineering school.
He was known to hang around the athletics offices in his spare time. Williams loved talking about sports and had played every sport growing up and through college – all except golf. While a UH professor, he took up golf and finally asked AD Harry Fouke if he could join in on his next round (Fouke also coached the golf team).
Not long after, Fouke asked Williams if he’d like to be the golf coach. Dave jumped at the chance to invigorate a program that had lost over 30 straight matches by that point. The new coach started dreaming about turning his golf program into something special.
Coach Williams often told a story from the 1953 spring sports banquet. Williams got up to speak and told the crowd that his team would win the national championship. Everyone laughed and started calling him “National Champion Williams.”
UH had never won a tournament until it got on the board at the 1955 Border Olympics. The Cougars won five more times in 1956 before Rex Baxter drained a 45’ birdie on the final hole at the Scarlet Course in Columbus to win Houston’s first national championship.
That win opened the floodgates. From that 1956 win until 1970, Houston won 12 of 15 national titles. Of the three times they didn’t win, the Coogs finished runner-up twice – losing by a shot and two shots in 1963 and 1968.
The Cougars dominated the sport to the point that players believed the most difficult tournaments of the year were qualifiers to make the UH team.
“Houston had the three best teams in the country,” says former Oklahoma State coach Mike Holder. “The five guys that made it and the ten that missed.” Holder won eight national titles as a coach before becoming the AD in Stillwater.
Early on, Williams decided he wanted his team to play against the best. He called Fred Cobb, who had just won four straight national titles at North Texas State (now UNT). Coach Williams asked if NTSU would play a match against his Cougars, and Cobb agreed.
When the Cougars arrived in Denton, they found that Coach Cobb had forgotten about the agreement. So he went around the dorms, rounding up some guys to play the Cougars. UH was beaten soundly by the guys that Cobb rustled up. That didn’t sit well with Dave.
After the loss, Williams began dreaming about how to change college golf. He didn’t like match-play events where one school faced another. Dave thought that if he had enough pull, he would switch tournaments to medal play and have 10 or more teams at each tournament.
The change he sought eventually revolutionized high school and college golf. Now, virtually every major college tournament is stroke play using his five-keep-four format (five players compete, and the best four scores in each round are counted).
Dave always wanted his golf program to be treated equally to other teams on campus. “If football can have it, so can we” was his mantra. So, when he decided to host a golf tournament in Houston, he wanted it to be big.
Coach Dave began the All-America Intercollegiate Invitational (also known as the Double A, Double I). He grew the AAII into a monster in just a few short years.
Months before each AAII, Dave pored over various country club directories. He began cold calling members, selling three tickets to the AAII for $10. He’d do this every night from 7-10 pm, figuring if people didn’t have to buy a ticket, they wouldn’t come.
The result was that the AAII became the country’s best tournament, and thousands of people attended each day. The tourney was carried on local TV and featured a pageant, appearances by the UH band, and even the live Shasta attended.
After sixteen national championships, coaching eight individual champions, and 30 First-Team All-Americans, Dave Williams had the last laugh. Williams is a UH legend and deserves recognition as one of the men who built UH athletics.
Special thanks to Peggy Williams Grote for her help on this story.
Dave Williams – A Life In Pictures
Click through the gallery to learn more about Coach Dave Williams and the UH golf program he built.
