The RoundHouse | 6/14/2019 3:32:00 PM
His golfers described
Grier Jones as "giddy" after the tournament, a word rarely associated with the coach.
Giddy, however, fits that day in Arizona at the end of a vintage Jones schedule – two tournaments, long flight – during spring break. While their classmates played on beaches or ski trips, the Shocker golfers grinded on a mini-tour and proved something to everybody that week in 2012, most notably their coach.
"Sixteen shots. Wow."
In the memories of those Shocker golfers, Jones kept saying that - in the van after the tournament, at the restaurant, at the airport. In a career full of Jones-like tournament wins, this one stands as perhaps the Jonesiest, his golfers say.
Wichita State trailed by 16 strokes entering the final day of 2012 Desert Shootout in Goodyear, Ariz.
They won it. That made Jones happy. His golfers regard it as one of their best moments.
"When Coach was driving, he wasn't about talking too much," Rafael Becker said. "He was like 'Everybody ready, everybody got everything?' Then he just stops the car. We're all like 'What happened?' Then he looks back – '16 shots. Wow.'"
Grier Jones retired this month, officially ending his tenure at Wichita State after 24 seasons. His legacy is summed up with a bunch of championships and a bunch of golfers who learned that the truth is in the dirt and that finishing strong is the ultimate good.
Jones led the Shockers to 13 NCAA regionals. In 2003 and 2004, they advanced from the regional to the NCAA Championships. NCAA performances rank at the top in his mind. The 2012 Desert Shootout, at face value merely one of many regular-season tournaments, might reveal more about the way Jones coached and what made his teams successful.
"I remember at the restaurant after, Grier was sitting there with a big smirk on his face and he was like 'Wow,'" Calvin Pearson said. "He could not stop talking about it. He was so competitive that winning like that was just everything. His biggest thing was to finish. That was the best thing that we could give him."
Wichita State started the third round of the tournament in third place, 16 shots behind leader BYU, which featured current PGA Tour member Zac Blair. The Shockers won by two strokes with Becker shooting a final-round 66 to earn medalist honors. Louis Cohen Boyer placed eighth with a 210 and Sparks tied for ninth with a 211.
"We hadn't played very well the first two rounds," Jones said. "I didn't watch the scores. I just never did that. My theory with the kids was 'Hey, play as good as you can play.' But I could tell things were getting tight, just by the way other coaches were reacting."
In their memories, the Shockers trailed big even near the end of the day. The 15-team field included host Denver, Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska and Tulsa.
"It all kind of happened the last five holes," Sparks said, describing a deficit of around 10 shots. "It was really special at the end. You don't see Grier proud like that that often."
Winning that tournament meant a lot to the Shockers. It came at the end of spring break, a few days after they won the UCF Rio Pinar Invitational in Orlando. After a cross-country flight, they struggled during the first two rounds before rallying to finish with a 28-under 836.
"We're all tired," Sparks said. "We flew across time zones. We didn't think we really had a chance."
The Shockers did have factors in their favor.
The course played to their advantage. Two years earlier, Becker, Sparks and Tyler Gann helped defeat Kansas in a playoff in the same tournament. That group won six tournaments in 2011-12, including the Missouri Valley Conference, and finished ninth in the NCAA regional.
All five golfers earned All-MVC honors in 2012 with Becker the Player of the Year.
"More than anything, we were brothers," Becker said. "We were really a family and everybody wanted to win. Everybody wanted to help each other. You want your friends to have that feeling."
And they had years of Jones telling them to work hard – the truth is in the dirt – and finish strong. Jones' golfers talk about his insistence on practice and more practice and they talk about his willingness to work with them, spending time with everybody on the roster who wanted his instruction. Finishing strong, in Jones' world, is the best measure of a golfer. He sometimes doubled the number of strokes per hole over the final three holes of a qualifying practice round to emphasize that concept to his golfers.
Jones, who spent 14 years on the PGA Tour and won NCAA medalist honors in 1968 for Oklahoma State, cared about the process more than the result. His golfers remembered winning a tournament and Jones wasn't particularly pleased with their play. They also remember struggling through most of a round and making Jones happy by maintaining focus and finishing on a good note.
"It just came from his competitive nature, to know that you hung in there, even though you had a tough day," Sparks said. "He didn't like anybody giving up. That's how he coached. Give it 100 percent."
Jones learned how to finish during his youth playing at McDonald Park Golf Course when the automatic bets got bigger as the round progressed.
"Those bets kept accumulating," Jones said. "It taught you that you couldn't win out there unless you could play the last three holes."
That 2012 team started calling themselves "The Clippers" because of their ability to come back and clip an opponent. Jones delighted in that identity.
"Any time we were in the hunt, we would talk about it that way," Becker said. "That year we won a bunch and a lot of times you weren't leading. We really cared about the team wins."
Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.
