Golf's Most Successful Coach by Jim Hiskey
Read/Listen to the 1966 Golf Digest article on Coach Dave Williams
On the eve of the 1966 NCAA men’s golf championship hosted by Stanford, Jim Hiskey - a member of Houston’s first championship winning team a decade earlier in 1956 - wrote about his coach Dave Williams ahead of Houston’s attempt at (another) team three-peat. Titled Golf’s Most Successful Coach, this article was featured in the June 1966 issue of Golf Digest magazine. In it, Hiskey reflects on that first team title as well as giving insight on the unique man who had already established himself as one of the greats in collegiate golf history.
As we approach the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Houston dynasty, we thought it would be a great time to revisit this wonderful article on Coach Dave Williams who passed 27 years ago today. As a special treat, we have audio of the author himself reading this article - with some added insight - written 60 years ago, 10 years after he helped capture that first magical title!
Click the button to play the audio as you scroll along with the text of the article transcribed below:
Golf's Most Successful Coach
Golf Digest article transcribed below (from a personal copy) is archived here: https://archive.golfdigest.com/article/1966/6/1/golfs-most-successful-coach
U. of Houston golfers seek their 9th NCAA Championship in 11 years under the leadership of political, sentimental, promotional super-optimistical David G. Williams
We were in shock. Coach was trembling. The rest of us were just plain numb. Baxter appeared calm enough on the outside, but I'm sure he was like jelly inside.
The date was June, 1956, the tournament the National Collegiate Athletic Ass'n championship, and the place the Scarlet Course at Ohio State. University of Houston Coach Dave Williams, along with players Frank Wharton, Richard Parvino and myself, watched nervously as Rex Baxter lined up a 60-foot putt on the last hole. If he could two-putt, Houston would tie for the NCAA title.
"Bax" looked over the putt briefly, took a couple of practice swings and putted. His stroke was solid. We knew it would be close. In the last three feet, the ball slid beautifully to the right and disappeared into the cup. It wasn't a tie! We had won!
Parvino catapulted himself four feet into the air. I headed for Baxter but caught Parvino on his way down. Coach sprang onto the green like a hungry bear and gave Baxter a wrestler's hug. It took us three hours to calm down enough to make any kind of sense.
No wonder. This was Houston's first NCAA golf championship, the No. 1 prize in collegiate golf. For Coach Dave Williams, it was a dream fulfilled.
When we were freshmen, Williams had set about to instill in us the vision of winning the NCAA. His inspiration certainly gave us the impetus to take that first championship, and I'm confident that without Williams' guidance Houston's teams, no matter how brilliant the talent, would not have been able to win eight NCAA team championships and six individual titles between 1956 and 1965. Only in 1961 and 1963 did the Cougars slip. No doubt Houston will be among the favorites for the 1966 NCAA, June 22-25 at Stanford.
Williams began to drum this idea of winning the NCAA into me even before I enrolled at Houston. I remember his calling me a few weeks after I had been graduated from the Pocatello (Ida.) High School in the spring of 1954.
"Jim," he said, "you should come to the home of the next national champions. Houston will dominate the collegiate golf world for years to come."
I hadn't planned to attend Houston. I wanted to go to North Texas State so that I could play on winning teams with the best players. My older brother, Marion, had gone there and played with the likes of Don January and Billy Maxwell. North Texas had recently won four NCAA titles. But Williams said that if I wanted to play on a winning team, I should definitely come to Houston. There seemed to be no doubt in his mind.
I had met Texans before, but never one so outwardly sure of himself. Actually, I don't think Williams is quite so confident as he appears. At heart, I believe he has his unsure moments. Often he is hesitant, sentimental and very emotional. But I didn't learn this until after we had won a couple of championships. He had me fooled.
David G. Williams - "Coach" as he likes his players to call him - is a portly, soft-spoken, 47-year-old East Texas professor, who could pass a board exam for psychology if he had to. His name often arouses violent emotion.
Henry Ransom, golf coach at Texas A&M, has described Williams as a "politician with a game comparable to that of a corporation executive." Dick Forrester, head golf professional at the Houston Country Club, calls him a "great promoter."
On the other hand, Kermit Zarley, a recent success on the Professional Golfers' Ass'n circuit and a former Houston team captain, says Williams is a "sentimentalist." Our athletic director, Harry Fouke, thinks Williams is a "super-optimist."
I agree on all counts - politician, promoter, sentimentalist, super-optimist. He's all of these things rolled into one, and they're all good reasons for his great success in molding winning teams.
Williams believes team spirit and desire are the difference between winning and losing. He starts teaching his golfers team spirit the first day they arrive on campus. I don't know how many times I've heard him say something like, "When you play for the University of Houston, the team comes first; you come second."
"You could never have a good team without good players," Williams admits, "but by the same token you'll never have a great team without great team spirit."
"Coach gets us to forget completely about ourselves individually," Kerm once said. "When you're out there hitting it terribly and wanting to give up, you have to keep trying. You realize the team is depending on you for your best score possible."
Williams himself shows little concern about being labelled a "promoter," often by rival coaches who point to his extensive recruitment program. It's an ambitious program, he admits, but what's wrong in going after the best players? He believes his teams' success depends 50 per cent on recruitment, although I'd give it a lesser figure.
"You have to know what type of boy you're looking for," Williams says. "And you have to be lucky. It's impossible to put your finger on a certain high school boy and say he'll be a great player later on. Too many things can go wrong with his attitude and desire, especially when he starts competing against better players."
"You can't imagine," says his attractive wife, Virginia, "the hours Dave has worked and what it has taken out of him to promote Houston and college golf in general."
Contrary to popular opinion, Houston does not have 20 golf scholarships available, or any such number. When Houston won its first title in 1956, there were 2.5 full scholarships available. By the time I was a senior, there were four, each equivalent to about $1,500 a year. Now there is more money for golf scholarships at Houston, but it's spread thinner. The top scholarship now amounts to $1,000 a year, and Jacky Cupit, in 1960, was the last player to receive a full scholarship.
Houston's recent teams have been practically self-sufficient because of funds received from the annual All-America Championship, held at Houston every spring. Last year Williams hustled and sold $17,000 worth of tickets to this event.
Despite Williams' recruitment of exceptional talent, Houston teams wouldn't be nearly so successful were it not for the competitive gantlet his golfers must learn to endure. His program produces hard-nosed tournament-tested golfers. It's all based on survival of the fittest.
I'll never forget the story my younger brother, Babe, tells about the inter-team fight to make a trip to the Southern Intercollegiate Championship in 1962. Babe, now on the pro tour, graduated from Houston in 1962.
"Homero Blancas and Dick Crawford were exempt from team qualifying," Babe recalls, "and that left five of us - Rocky Thompson, Fred Marti, Ron Weber, Kermit Zarley and myself - scrambling for three spots. Coach made us play ten rounds on five different courses just to see who would go to this one tournament. After eight rounds, there were only five shots separating the five of us. Kerm and I were fourth and fifth. In the ninth round, he had 69, I had 70 - but we didn't gain an inch. The next day it was about the same. Weber got the fifth spot - and then went on to win the Southern."
Williams makes no claim to be a great instructor or player, although his regular game is in the low 80s.
"I found out long ago that golf championships are not determined on the basis of how well the coach plays," he says succinctly. "Instruction is very important," he goes on, "but not the end-all. I don't believe a coach should spend too much time teaching. After a boy has learned the fundamentals, he should be taught to have pride in his game and to believe in it. After a boy tees off, he can't take advice from anyone - he's on his own."
Even when his team is practicing, Williams doesn't like one player to ask another, "What did you hit on that shot?"
"In competition," he explains, "no one is going to tell you what they hit. If a boy is dedicated, he'll figure out a way to get the ball into the hole. A person can be learning about golf as long as he lives. But there comes a time when you have to play. When you have to think about your swing on every shot, you're in trouble."
"One reason Coach has been so successful," says Kerm, "is that he doesn't teach how to play. He merely teaches how to win."
Though Williams' golf teams have always prospered from being "together," this affinity has created interesting problems on occasion.
In my days at Houston, we made our trips in a beat-up Ford station wagon - five or six players, a coach, our clubs and luggage. After the first hundred or so miles, we'd all feel like sardines. We were really "together."
And most of our trips were quite lengthy. Texas is a big state, and Williams believes in exposing his teams to the best competition no matter where it is to be found.
Williams is outstanding in many ways, but he'll never win any safe-driving awards.
"Oh no," Baxter would cry as Williams slid behind the wheel, "I can't stand it." Williams would usually give in and let one of us drive.
From what I hear, he hasn't improved. Kerm tells the story of one trip they made just a few years ago: "As usual there were six of us packed into that wagon. We were headed for Albuquerque, and Coach was driving. It wasn't so bad, until once when we were going through a little town in New Mexico we noticed we were going about 15 miles per hour. There was a wooden figure of a man dressed in a yellow uniform, right arm outstretched, obviously 'warning' drivers to go slow. Coach approached the yellow 'man,' rolled down the window and started to ask it a question. He couldn't have been more than four feet away before he finally discovered it was only made of wood. That was enough. From then on, either Coach wore his glasses while he drove, or one of us took the wheel."
We would do everything "together" - get up, eat breakfast, go to the course, practice, and after we had played, everyone would band together for dinner. Once, however, Williams - never one to underplay the value of a dollar - carried this togetherness too far.
We were playing in the Southern Intercollegiate, and to save a few bucks he had seven of us, including himself, sleep in one room. After a couple of hours of joke around, we quieted down. The silence was complete except for Williams' antique alarm clock. Then Stan Binion; a stalwart 6-foot, 5-inches with a Durante-like nose, started to snore. "Bun," as we called him, was dead to the world, but the rest of us weren't. Soon Baxter whispered, "Bun, hey Bun," several times, each time louder, but there was no response. Finally, Baxter poked him a couple of times and yelled, "Hey, Bun." By this time we were all awake, even Binion.
"Yah, what do you want?" Bun said sleepily.
"Stick that alarm clock up your nose," Baxter bellowed.
Needless to say, this brought the roof down. Frank (Hoot) Wharton roared so hard he literally fell out of bed. I didn't think Williams would ever stop laughing.
The next day our scores reflected our lack of sleep. Sportswriters were calling Baxter the best collegiate player of his day, but he missed the cut. The team finished fourth or fifth, and we had been favored to win.
When I was in school, team members were allowed only $3 a day for meals, and nothing for caddies. The meal rate has been raised to $4 now, but there is still nothing for caddies, except when the team has to play 36 holes in one day. This seemed stingy to some of the guys. When Rex Baxter would go to a tournament, he'd make an early visit to the locker room and announce to any competitor he could find, "We are going to bring you fools to your knees." Then he'd look for the best caddie, strut out to the practice tee and prepare to play. Thus, before he'd even started, Baxter had invested his $3. By the end of the day, he would have spent twice his allowance. He was always giving Coach a bad time for being so tight, and the rest of us chimed in, too. But Williams wouldn't give in. Maybe he thought we'd be tougher golfers if we were a little hungry.
Williams is more of a counselor than a disciplinarian, but he can be strict at times. Once Baxter and I took off for a big Calcutta tournament in Wichita Falls without his consent. He didn't approve of such events for college boys, and still doesn't. This time he found out where we were staying and called us. "If you two don't get back here tomorrow," he said in a curiously broken tone, "you're both off the team."
We knew he wasn't bluffing. Williams meant it. He never allows one of his players privileges the others don't have. We were just about to quit the team - we didn't think he had a right "meddling" with our private lives - but after several hours of sulking, we did return.
While Williams does work hard, he enjoys himself. He's wanted to coach since his junior high school days when his father was superintendent at the East Texas State Teachers College gymnasium. "I was always hanging around the gym," Williams says. "I took up every sport except golf, and I didn't try that because there was no course."
After graduating from high school, Williams entered East Texas to begin work toward an engineering degree. After two years, he transferred to Texas A&M, but a little more than a year later, his father's death and his mother's illness brought him back to East Texas, where he stayed on to complete his masters degree in chemistry and mechanical engineering.
Williams first began teaching at 20, at the Mt. Pleasant (Texas) High School. He worked summers in an oil refinery, soon became a research chemist and the, after World War II began, gained a commission in the Navy. He spent four years on anti-submarine and supply ship duty in the Caribbean and Pacific areas.
After the war he went to Houston as a chemical engineering professor, but the love of coaching was still with him. He would visit the physical education department and offer his services to Athletic Director Harry Fouke, who, at the time, was coaching the golf team.
"Things finally got so busy I didn't have time for golf," Fouke relates, "so one day I offered him the job. He took it right away."
Williams started studying golf and golfers, and it wasn't long before he made a visit to Fouke.
"Coach," Williams said, "we're going to win the NCAA."
Fouke had to chuckle. "Dave was always an optimist," Fouke says. "It was pretty funny - we weren't even playing in the NCAA then."
North Texas was the collegiate golf giant when Williams started his program in 1951. Golfers he approached thought twice about going to Houston. Everyone likes to be with a winner, and the winner was North Texas. But Williams had one thing in his favor - Houston's climate. Golf is a year-round sport there. I think that was the reason Baxter went to Houston - Rex is from Amarillo, Tex., in the northern part of the state. When Baxter decided on Houston in 1954, Williams and his Cougar teams were on the way up. Other good young players, discovering Rex was there, realized that Houston had something to offer.
Williams encourages other things at Houston besides golf. In fact, the sport is third on his list. Being a good citizen and getting a good education preface golf. He'd often talk about these things when he'd have us over to his home for charcoal hamburgers. Coach would relax, pull out his guitar and talk about his hopes and dreams for us, and for himself. "If I can contribute something to the life of each young man I'm associated with who comes here to school," he'd say, "just help him be a better citizen, get an education and become a better player, I'll feel I've accomplished something important."
Williams talks frequently about his church and his faith. He's a deacon in the Church of Christ and teaches Sunday School and a special leadership class on Wednesday nights. "In the back of my mind," he says, "I've always had the ambition to start a university that would embrace religious applications, morality, leadership qualities, social activities and, of course, high academics. I could write a book on what I'd like to see such a school accomplish."
His immediate challenge, however, is to win the 1966 NCAA. The Cougars have Marty Fleckman, who won the individual title last year, and Jim Grant, who won the All-America Intercollegiate and the New England Amateur in 1965. Williams also expects Elwin Fanning to be of great help, along with juniors Hal Underwood and Mike Mitchell and sophomores Mike Wynn, Bob Bourne, Jerry Don Barrier, Bob Diamond and Tim Leslie.
I don't know if Dave Williams has told this team that "you're going to win Houston's ninth NCAA championship," but I'd be very surprised if he hasn't - and if they don't.
FOLLOW-UP: HOUSTON DOES WIN 1966 TITLE
Shortly after the publication of this article in Golf Digest, the Houston Cougars did in fact win their 9th team title in 11 years. At this point it had become such an expected thing that newspapers didn’t even carry photos of the winning team. Having dropped the individual match play portion the year before in favor of 72 holes of stroke play - team title determined in first 36 holes - Houston’s top four players finished T10 or better.
Over the following 20 years, Coach Dave Williams would add 7 more team titles. By the time of his retirement in 1987, Williams had become the winningest coach in collegiate golf championship history, and it’s not even close. Houston’s 16 team titles is the most in the NCAA era (1939-present), behind only Yale (21) throughout the entirety of college golf’s long history. To give a little more perspective: Coach Dave Williams’ Houston teams won 43% of the NCAA championships they played for across his 37 year coaching career!! Check out more details in the COACH CORNER section of entry #16 (of course!) in our NCAA men’s championship series:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Hiskey talks modestly about his role in the beginning of Houston’s dominance over the sport, but as we near the 70th anniversary of that first team title I believe that it’s important to recognize the impact he and his teammates had in kicking off the sport’s greatest dynasty. In the next couple of months we will publish a full in-depth article about the historically significant Hiskey brothers - “Sonny,” Jim, and “Babe” - however below you will find some details on the author of this Golf Digest piece, both as it appeared then and now, nearly 60 years later.
1966
Jim Hiskey is a 1958 Houston graduate who played on three NCAA championship teams there. He played briefly on the PGA tour, but now is taking graduate studies in communications at American University, Washington, D.C. His story about Homero Blancas, Golf Digest's 1965 Rookie of the Year and another Houston graduate, appeared in Golf Digest's 1966 Annual.
2025
Jim Hiskey has authored several additional texts since this piece was published in 1966, including two books - Winning is a Choice & Choices of Champions - with Paul Meier. He was gracious enough to sit down and record himself (re-)reading his story which he hadn’t seen in several decades. It’s been a true honor to speak with him and his family, and as you heard there are still many wonderful stories to (re-)discover from college golf’s past!
From his daughter, writer and journalist Michelle Hiskey:
“All of us Hiskeys are amazed and thankful that our dad/papa/great-papa Jim Hiskey is still going strong in 2025 at age 89. He surprised and delighted me during our recording session by refusing to merely read the Golf Digest copy; he provided criticism along the way, in real time. What a sharp mind, with the trademark Hiskey stubbornness :) This recording is a meaningful glimpse into Dad’s fond Houston memories. Thank you David Tenneson, for this recording and for honoring our dad’s golf and writing accomplishments.”
Thanks for reading (and listening)! Be sure to return not only for other posts on college golf history, but specifically for the special feature on the Hiskey Brothers coming soon!