by Jesse Delerno
LSU Sports Information
Chuck Winstead admits he’s still feeling his way through the college game four years after returning to his alma mater as head coach of the LSU men’s golf team.
Despite a lengthy and impressive resume which included a five-year association with legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus and a six-year stint as Director of Instruction of his own golf academy in Baton Rouge, Winstead had never taken the reigns of a collegiate program before agreeing to his current position in 2005. But when he accepted former Athletics Director Skip Bertman‘s offer to lead the men’s squad, he immediately recognized the lifeblood of any successful collegiate program ? recruiting.
“I’m still a rookie at this, but when I look at college athletics, it’s pretty clear to me that the team that have the most talent usually win,” Winstead said. “If we’re going to be competitive and build the type of program that we all want, then we are going to have to recruit talented athletes.
“From my perspective, it was pretty clear that whatever had to be done to be able to go out and attract the most talented athletes to come here, then it was my job to start calling attention to it at LSU.”
And Winstead has done just that.
In each of the past two seasons, Winstead and assistant coach Shane Warren have assembled back-to-back recruiting classes ranked among the nation’s elite, and they are already seeing their efforts pay major dividends for LSU Golf.
In 2007-08, the freshman trio of Andrew Loupe, John Peterson and Clayton Rotz helped the team earn a berth to the NCAA West Regional, the program’s first appearance in NCAA postseason play since 2005, and each was named to the inaugural eight-man SEC All-Freshman Team. Moreover, this season’s highly touted freshman class is already making its mark as newcomers Sang Yi and Josh Jones captured their first career top-10 finishes within the first two tournaments of the fall season.
Winstead’s success in convincing some of the top junior golfers in the country to play for LSU can be attributed to his sterling reputation as an instructor. He has been a Golf Magazine Top 100 teacher since 2005, and Golf Digest considers him Louisiana’s best teacher.
“My past has been in helping young men play the game better and helping everybody really play the game better,” Winstead said. “I’ve spent my life as a teacher, so relative to teaching, it’s a different background from what most college coaches have in golf.
“I’m not saying it’s better or worse. It’s up for other people to decide whether it’s better or not, but the young men that I’ve talked to kind of like it, so it’s worked out pretty well.”
However, Winstead believes one of his greatest pitches to the nation’s top junior golfers is simply his love for the university he played for and graduated from in 1991.
“LSU is a special place,” Winstead said. “There are very few places, in my opinion, you could go to where the student body, past alumni and the faculty all have that common bond and spirit that you feel here. I think that having someone who loves LSU, talking to a young man about that can be very powerful because I speak from the heart.”
Though he’s quick to point out that persuading gifted athletes to join the program is only one part of the job. If he envisions bringing this storied program back to the glory days when the Tigers won four national championships and 15 SEC titles, he’ll have to continue developing his golfers.
“You have to recruit well, but we have to follow through on helping these guys get better,” Winstead added. “These young guys are talented, but they’re not where they need to be. If they were where they needed to be, they’d already be cashing checks.
“We are going to push them and help them get better, and that’s the part that I feel like more than anything differentiates what we do versus maybe what you can find at other places.”
LSU has enjoyed a promising start to the 2008-09 season. With a lineup predominantly made up of freshmen and sophomores, the Tigers opened the season by winning the Gopher Invitational hosted by the University of Minnesota and nearly captured their second team title a week ago after falling in a playoff at the Squire Creek Invitational. The squad is also ranked in the Top 25 in three national polls.
But Winstead likes to keep things in perspective.
“My expectations are not necessarily on tournament wins or rankings or anything like that,” Winstead said. “We’ve had a nice start, but our expectations are always pretty simple, that we get better everyday. Every single day, I want each one of those young men to go out there and get after it where we can get better. If we do that, the rest of it will take care of itself.”