Each Sunday during the 2016-17 school year, the Carson-Newman athletic communications department will shine a spotlight on a current or former Carson-Newman student-athlete looking to tell a tale of life outside of his or her respective sport.
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Each individual who serves as a coach at Carson-Newman University has a long list of accomplishments they put together before coming to Mossy Creek. Basketball coach Chuck Benson spent time as an assistant for the Tennessee Volunteers. Jordan Taylor swam for the Great Britain national team. Nick Reveiz had a stint with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. For women's golf coach Suzanne Strudwick and men's golf coach Randy Wylie, their paths to Jefferson City included more than 30 combined years at the professional level. They each won multiple tournaments while living out their dream of playing pro golf. Said Wylie: "It was a great experience along the way."
For both Strudwick and Wylie, playing golf at the highest level is a goal they set for themselves at a young age. "My dad was a club professional," said Wylie, "and that was his career, so I was around golf all the time. I'm kind of a golf gym rat, so to speak. From an early age, it was like, that's what you do, you grow up and become a pro golfer. I never thought there was anything else I was meant to do. As I played junior golf, I was playing at a high level and I was recruited by schools all over the country, so it emboldened me even more that I could player at a high level." Having a dad who spent so much time involved in the sport helped Wylie grow as a player starting at an early age. "[My dad] was a huge influence all the way around," he said. "I would talk to him about the mental side of the game and my short game. I also had the chance to caddy for him when I was very young. That was great because we'd always talk through the decision making process, so by the time I was 10 or 11, I was already thinking like a pro."
Strudwick's desire to reach the professional ranks came about differently, but she was just as determined to accomplish what she set out to do and she was also confident in her ability to do so. "I just had a dream," she said. "I could see myself playing professional golf. It was something [I had in mind] from the age of about 12. I watched [LPGA champion] Nancy Lopez on TV and said 'That's what I'm going to do.' I always geared my mind towards that. It was a goal and it was what I was going to do."
In 1983, just five years after setting this goal for herself, Strudwick earned the right to call herself a pro golfer when she joined the Ladies European Tour. "I turned pro when I was 17," she said. "At the time, the LET was so young, they were needing numbers. It was very exciting. It solidified that I was on the right path and I was on a trajectory that I wanted to be on and that I had an exciting future ahead, but there was still a lot of work to do. I knew there was a lot to learn. There was a certain standard and skill required before I could even attempt to reach that level. You're always working towards something." Even as she began her career on the LET, golf wasn't her only focus, as she was also studying to get a degree in computer science from Staffordshire University and working a part-time job. Eventually, however, the game she loved became her sole focus. "For at least the first five years of my professional career," Strudwick said. "I was dividing my time. Golf wasn't everything, but after the five years, it suddenly took off. We got new management for the LET and you were able to just play golf and make a living."
Wylie took a different route to the pro ranks, one that included an opportunity to play college golf at the Division I level. "I graduated from Texas A&M," he said, "and played on the golf team there. When I turned pro, it was interesting because I wasn't a super high level collegiate player. I was a good Division I player. I had to make my way through the mini-tours. I played on the Jordan tour, the West Florida tour, multiple tours in Florida. I was able to play on a number of different international tours. I was playing the Asian Tour and the Canadian Tour, as well as the South African Tour." While these circuits may not have had the notoriety of the PGA Tour, they were in no way lacking talented players. "The competition was incredible," Wylie said. "When I was playing the Jordan Tour, I'd be playing against guys like Lee Jansen and John Daly and two years later, they're both winning majors. It was hard to win on these tours, but then I'd see the guys who were beating me becoming major champions. It was top level competition. When you'd play internationally, you'd compete against guys who are world ranked. When I was playing in South Africa the first couple times, I was going against Retief Goosen and Ernie Els. I was like 'Boy, they seem like they're pretty good.' Turns out they were." Both Goosen and Els would go on to win PGA majors. After watching a number of his peers move on to bigger and better things, Wylie soon had his chance to spend some time in the limelight.
The Tennessee native turned pro in 1988, but for most of his first two years, was only able to find opportunities playing on golf's lesser known tours. That would change in 1990, when he earned a chance to qualify for the U.S. Open, one of the PGA Tour's four major events. After making it through a local qualifier, Wylie moved on to a sectional qualifier, an event where the competition can be extremely fierce. "You're playing against a lot of PGA Tour players," Wylie said, "and you play 36 holes in one day. They might have 100 guys for 15 spots." After finishing his final round, all the 25-year-old golfer could do was sit, wait and hope. "I played well enough where I felt like I was going to make it," he said, "but you're not really sure what everybody else is shooting because they don't have scoreboards up. I had to wait for a couple groups to finish and as those last scores went up and I found out I made it, I was with my brother, who was caddying for me. We had to act calm and cool, because you have all these experienced tour pros standing around you. Once we left the clubhouse and got in our car, we were both crying and yelling and couldn't believe we were moving on to the U.S. Open. It was so exciting, I can't even really describe it."
In the 1990 U.S. Open at the Medinah Country Club in Medinah, Ill., Wylie shot a two-under 70 in round one and made the cut following day two. Seven years later, he would get the chance to play in another U.S. Open and once again he was able to survive the first two days. In both instances, Wylie competed against some of the biggest names in the sport. In 1990, he played a practice round with Nick Faldo, who'd just won the Masters for the second consecutive year. The 1997 Open saw him fire a one-over 71 in the first round, three strokes better than Tiger Woods. In the final round of the tournament, he was paired with Vijay Singh, who would later be ranked as the No. 1 golfer in the world, and Wylie bested the three-time major champion by one stroke. "Those," Wylie said, "were phenomenal experiences for a guy who was a journeyman pro, to get to play with guys like that." All the while, the former Aggie made sure to soak in every moment. "On the golf course during play, you're trying to stay focused all the time," he said, "but even on the range, you have the time to sit back and look around be like 'There's 5,000 people watching us hit balls.' You might play a tournament in the Canadian Tour or the Asian Tour and there might be 1,000 people watching, which is neat, but then you're at the U.S. Open and there's 10,000 people around the 18th green. It was a fantastic experience."
Suzanne Strudwick's time playing at golf's highest level was no less fulfilling than that of her colleague. In 1989, she captured one of the LET's major events, the French Open. "I was going head-to-head with Marie-Laure de Lorenzi," Strudwick said. "She was the number one player on the European Tour and had been for a number of years. She was someone I looked up to. I played well enough the first three days to get in position. I had been in the lead before in other tournaments, but I was never quite in the mindset that I got myself into there. I realized that, to be successful, you almost have to let go and that was one of the things that I realized and did that day. It was a conscious effort to let go of the results. I had to go into a playoff and I beat her on the first hole." It's a memory she still cherishes. "I remember it fairly vividly," she said. "I sank about a 15-foot putt to win. They gave me a replica of the trophy. I have a video tape of it and one of the photographers got a picture of me when I sank the putt to win. I have that picture framed." Strudwick later went on to capture the title at the 1991 AGF Ladies Open and she was soon ready to take another step up. "My goal," she said, "was to be successful on the LPGA Tour."
In 1993, Strudwick left the LET and joined the LPGA. For the native of Cheshire, England, it was another opportunity to prove she was one of the world's best golfers, but it was not without some anxiety. "It was eye-opening," she said. "I can totally relate to college students coming to a university for the first time. You're trying to find your feet and where you belong and you're asking yourself if you're good enough to be here. There's a lot of self-doubt and self-esteem questions that come into it." Despite some initial nervousness, the LPGA's newest member settled in and her rookie season was a resounding success, ending with her being selected as the tour's Rookie of the Year. "It worked out well," she said. "None of the other Europeans had [won Rookie of the Year] before. I was really pleased."
After spending 14 season on the LPGA circuit, part of a career in golf that spanned more than 20 years, Strudwick retired in 2007, having captured five tournament victories and collecting more than $1.5 million in earnings. Randy Wylie concluded his time in the professional ranks in 1999, having competed in several PGA Tour events and gone up against some of world's best. Both have fond memories of their time as pros, but not all of them are about time spent on the golf course. "Traveling the world is something that really stands out," Wylie said. "It was amazing to go to some of these places. I was able to travel all over Asia and Canada and play tournaments in South Africa. When you're traveling around Asia, your perception of what poverty is changes. If you never left the United States, you might not have seen anything like what you'd see in India or Myanmar, the way the rest of the world actually functions. It gives you a different perspective." For Strudwick, the personal connections are what she remembers most. "What I look back on," she said, "is the relationships you build. I miss the competition and the challenge of getting better every day, but I can focus on that in other areas. What I miss the most are the players, the people. You don't realize it at the time, the relationships and the bonds that you're building, until you walk away from it. You realize that nobody else in your town and your community has that same experience that you do. We know what we've done, what we've achieved and what we used to do and those bonds are incredible."
Carson-Newman hired Strudwick as the women's golf coach in 2013 and one year later, Wylie was chosen run the men's program. When asked how often they use the lessons they learned during their professional careers in their current jobs, both coaches gave the same answer: "Every day." "A lot of it is really small stuff," said Wylie, "maybe changing a pre-shot routine a little bit or a perspective or a strategy on a shot. There are so many things. It might be something I learned from my dad when I was 12 or it might be something I learned playing in Asia." "We had a team meeting last night and I recanted several situations," said Strudwick. "We're having to prepare ourselves for this spring season and we're facing some adversity that we haven't dealt with before. As I related last night, when we're at our weakest, that's when we can also be at our strongest. I learned that lesson when I was on tour. I would say I'm at my most useful as a coach when we're at tournaments and the players find themselves in situations and I can come in and help them and calm them down. They might feel overwhelmed and I can be a calming force because there's no situation on the golf course I haven't found myself in." For both individuals, being successful in their current roles at Mossy Creek has a lot to do with the paths they took to get here.
The student-athletes who enroll at Carson-Newman benefit from the chance to learn from coaches who each spent years working to perfect their craft. For the young men and women who play golf for C-N, they enjoy the opportunity to learn from two individuals who competed at the highest level their sport has to offer. Both Suzanne Strudwick and Randy Wylie reached the top tier in the world of professional golf. With that experience, came knowledge that can't be acquired anywhere else. It allows them both to influence the lives of those who come through their programs in a way few other coaches can.
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