College golf is littered with examples of men’s programs that have found success despite academic rigors. Stanford, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest – and going further back, Ivy League stalwarts such as Yale, Harvard and Princeton – have spent considerable time as cornerstones of collegiate golf.
Vanderbilt has, by comparison, had a modest place in the college game. The program never won a national championship or finished runner-up. Its golf alumni are headlined by Brandt Snedeker, Luke List and Jon Curran, which is a pedestrian group compared with most of their Southeastern Conference neighbors.
A part of the reason is that Vandy is not known for being the easiest place for athletic accomplishments. The school has long been criticized for falling behind in the many arms races of college sports, whether that be with lackluster facilities or other forms of support outside of academics. School leaders often made decisions that flow against the “normal” current of college sports, such as eliminating a standalone athletic department so intercollegiate sports could more closely align with intramural sports, recently gutting its athletic communications department to move it under a broader umbrella of school communications, taking the university’s athletic fundraising offices off-campus or introducing a new athletic director over teleconference despite it being announced well before the pandemic started. Golf is one of just six men’s varsity sports. It’s not exactly Georgia or Alabama when it comes to catering to athletics.
All of this is to emphasize that Scott Limbaugh has executed one of most stunning jobs in college golf by turning the Commodores golf team into an unexpected perennial powerhouse. Under Limbaugh, Vandy has escaped from outside the top 75 in the Division I rankings to win 26 team events in the past decade, culminating with the best year in program history last season. That’s when Vandy won six of seven stroke-play events in the spring, earned the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Championship before reaching the final four and saw freshman Gordon Sargent become just the second Vanderbilt athlete to win an individual NCAA title. The team was 133-2 overall during the spring, marking one of the best semesters in college golf history.
“We don’t apologize for (focusing on academics). Therefore, not everybody is interested in coming here. We're in a great conference, but our education just sets us apart from all of our competition.”
Scott Limbaugh
There had only been 10 All-SEC players in the history of Vandy’s program before Limbaugh’s arrival in 2012. There have since been an additional 22 All-SEC golfers, including four SEC players of the year. Of the 15 best individual seasons in Vanderbilt history, 12 of them have been under Limbaugh’s watch, and we predict more on the horizon. Limbaugh brought in the No. 1 recruiting class in the country a year ago.
Impressively, Limbaugh has persuaded some of the nation’s best golfers to compete for an academic-first university.
“We love that part of it,” Limbaugh told Global Golf Post. “We don’t apologize for (focusing on academics). Therefore, not everybody is interested in coming here. We're in a great conference, but our education just sets us apart from all of our competition. You want to talk about a guy like Gordon (Sargent); he's a very high academic young man, and he's just not gonna settle for anything but the best. And we feel like Vanderbilt offers the best of both worlds. I think we've shown that we're going to compete for SEC and national championships, and also help them get an education that's going to help set them apart.”
Limbaugh arrived in Nashville in 2012 on the heels of being an assistant at Alabama, where he helped coach Jay Seawell win back-to-back national championships with players such as Justin Thomas, Bud Cauley and Cory Whitsett. A self-described smalltown boy from Childersburg, Ala., Limbaugh once walked on at Central Alabama Community College and then played at Division III Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Ala., where he would go on to become a head coach at age 24.
Some people have a coaching gene. Early on, Limbaugh knew he had that mentality.
“I was always one of these guys that never was the best at any sport, but I was always a captain or a leader,” Limbaugh said. “That's always kind of been who I was.”
At Huntingdon, Limbaugh formed a relationship with Seawell. Limbaugh would pepper the Crimson Tide head man with questions about how to operate practices, the best ways to recruit and anything else he could think of. In 2007, that in-state relationship paid off when Seawell reached out to Limbaugh to offer him an assistant position that doubled as the recruiting coordinator.
“Jay was always a coach that would talk to me, you know, kind of a lowly Division III golf coach,” Limbaugh said. “When he gave me a call, it felt like it was just the way it was supposed to be. He hired me pretty quickly there, and we got to enjoy a pretty good amount of success over the five years we were together.”
With the Tide rolling, it was only a matter of time before another school came calling. Many of them did before Limbaugh found the right fit. The all-important phone call came from Snedeker the night before Alabama faced Texas in the 2012 national championship final at Riviera.
“I didn’t answer his call at first because I didn’t recognize the number,” Limbaugh said with a laugh. “But we started to text, and I expressed that I did have genuine interest in the job.”
Vanderbilt was not just looking for a new head coach but someone who could resurrect a dormant program that needed a shot of energy. Snedeker, who was a leader of the search committee, declared confidence when Limbaugh was introduced.
“We have found the right man for the job,” Snedeker said at the time.
That was a vast understatement. Vanderbilt soon built one of the best facilities in college golf – the money came purely through alumni and other private donations – in September 2013, and Limbaugh became the architect of something special. He sat down at length with Hunter Stewart, a player who was considering transferring because of the coaching change, and sold him on a vision. Stewart would go on to be a Walker Cupper and one of the top-ranked players in the country.
And then came recruiting Matthias Schwab, a talented Austrian who had a variety of offers from the nation’s best programs. Limbaugh convinced him, too, despite there “not really being much to show him” at the time. Schwab not only committed, but he fell in love with Vanderbilt to the point where he still keeps in close touch with the team. This past spring, he traveled to Palm Beach and spent an entire day watching the team at its NCAA regional.
That’s the culture Limbaugh created.
“We thought we could create something that was different and great,” Limbaugh said. “I had a vision for what I thought it could be. I looked at our baseball program here at Vanderbilt, and I just couldn't figure out a way that if they can do that, why can’t we at least create something pretty special?
“I'm not a big comparison guy. I'm not trying to be like Alabama. I am always trying to be the best we can be. And the way I've got it figured out is we're in the best city in the Southeast; we've got the best education in the Southeastern Conference. (The administration) wants us to be successful. So quite frankly, if we're not successful, that’s on me.”
Limbaugh doesn’t have to worry about that, because he has this job as long as he wants it. He talks quickly, using your name in a way that makes you feel like a friend, even if you’ve just met. There is a certain energy to Limbaugh where you want to believe what he is saying because you can hear the earnestness in his voice.
He is at or near the top of the list for best college golf coaching jobs in the past decade.
If it continues, it may be one of the best college athletics coaching jobs we’ve ever seen.
Top: Vanderbilt has produced 22 All-SEC golfers since Scott Limbaugh arrived at the school in 2012.
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