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Four Coaches Inducted into NCGA Hall of Fame


This year’s class was


the fourth in NCGA history. The first three are:


2013: Kay Cockerill, Roger Maltbie and Johnny Miller 2012: Pebble Beach Co:


Clint Eastwood, Dick Ferris, Arnold Palmer and Peter Ueberroth


2011: Jack Bariteau, Grant Spaeth, Sandy Tatum and Ken Venturi


T


Desimone has built Cal into a college golf juggernaut. How? As former player Drew Sanders said it while introducing Desimone—by establishing the Cal Golf Way. “It’s the courage, the competition and


the compassion,” Sanders said. “Steve was the keeper of our culture.” Desimone’s latest team had pundits debating whether it was the best collegiate team ever assembled. Cal set a modern era NCAA record


he 2014 Hall of Fame Class was inducted Tuesday night of AT&T week at Spanish Bay, headlined by four college golf coaches who have led their Northern California schools to national champion- ships: Cal’s Steve Desimone, San Jose State’s Mark Gale and Stanford’s Wally


Goodwin and Conrad Ray. The ceremony took place during the California Golf Writ- ers and Broadcasters Association annual banquet. Among the honorees were Rich- ard Harris and Bo Links, who were given the Jack Lemmon “Ambassador of Golf” Award and the NCGA Distinguished Service Award for their commitment to saving Sharp Park. As Harris said of the embattled Alister MacKenzie municipal in Daly City, “Public golf and Sharp Park are worth the fight.” That message of fighting for golf in Northern California resonated with all the honored coaches.


Steve Desimone. When Steve Desimone began his coaching tenure at Cal, men’s golf had just lost its status as a varsity sport. Thirty-four incredible years later,


with 12 victories in 14 stroke-play events during the 2012-13 season, and its players earned medalist honors an impressive 10 times. As fellow inductee and Stanford coach


Conrad Ray said, “We try to figure out how to beat the Bears every day.” Even though Cal was upset in the semifinals of the NCAA Match Play Championship, both Golfstat and Golfweek voted the Golden Bears No. 1 after the season anyway. Desimone led Cal to its first national


championship in 2004, when it rallied from eight strokes down on the final day to top UCLA by six. Desimone was named


Golfweek’s Coach of the Year, as well as the NCGA’s Grand Master of the Year. Desimone was also named the 2013


National Men’s Coach of the Year by the Golf Coaches Association of America, and earned the Jack Lemmon “Ambassador of Golf ” Award at the 2013 NCGA Hall of Fame dinner. “Coaching was something that was in


me early on, and something that will con- tinue in me as long as I live,” Desimone said. Desimone actually played basketball at Cal as an undergrad, before serving in the military and taking over the men’s golf team. And it’s that basketball background that brings out the best in his guys.


Wally Goodwin


Steve Desimone 66 / NCGA.ORG / SPRING 2014


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