Motto for alum-turned-coach is 'be prepared'

Dudley Hart rolled his chair over to a desk covered in clutter in his tiny (and I mean tiny) office and pulled a worn yardage book from the pile to show an old hobbling golfer (me).

“The players make fun of me for this,” he said. “But I always tell them that this is what pros do. You need to have as much information as possible.

“Human errors will happen. But you can’t make mistakes because you were not prepared.”

The yardage book wasn’t from months or years ago but from the previous weekend when Florida had won another tournament.

The Gator boys are winning a lot these days on the golf courses of America, including last year’s NCAA Championship. While J.C. Deacon re-energized the program after Buddy Alexander retired, Hart’s impact was so great that he was named the national assistant coach of the year.

In fact, the Florida four-time All-American really never thought about coaching. He battled through a lot as a player, including the kind of news nobody wants to hear when his wife, Suzanne, was diagnosed with a softball-sized tumor on her lung.

That was when they lived in Buffalo (where Hart grew up) with their triplets and used it as a base for his golf career.

Suzanne is fine now and the Harts have four children – the triplets Ryan, Rachel and Abby along with Avery. They left Buffalo winters behind and moved to Naples when Deacon took over as the new Florida head coach.

Hart had taken a medical extension from the PGA Tour to be with Suzanne and another one a few years later because of two spinal fusions on his back and a bad thumb. A two-time winner on Tour with 55 top 10 finishes in his career, Hart – now 55 – thought he would settle into the twilight years on the Champions Tour.

Then he made a call to Deacon to tell him he was there for him.

“I bleed orange and blue, and I wanted to help him in any way I could,” Hart said. “He asked me to be a volunteer coach and come up every once in a while.”

He drove up two or three times a semester. Then, assistant coach Mark Leon left for Florida Atlantic. Hart filled in on an interim basis in 2021, living at Deacon’s house, as Deacon started interviewing assistant coaches.

One day, Hart pulled Deacon aside.

“I told him I might be crazy, but I wanted to do that job,” Hart said. “He said I was crazy. But I told him that it wasn’t rocket science, and every job has something you don’t want to do. I could handle that.

“I just loved working with young people. I’m so lucky he gave me the chance.”

Hart was hired, and suddenly the guy who had been a nomad (as most golfers are) settled into a home and an office.

Not long after that, Hart was standing on the 18th hole in Scottdale, Arizona, watching Fred Biondi clinch the national title match against Georgia Tech.

“Dudley took our program from good to great,” Deacon said. “The structure he brought to our program changed everything.”

Not everybody jumped right in to listen to a coach who had been a “volunteer” for four years and was now preaching the Boy Scout motto – Be Prepared.

But eventually, Deacon and the team figured out that a guy who had won more than $13 million playing professional golf might know a little something.

Obviously, it paid off, and it’s a message any golfer can apply.

“I’ve seen a lot of different ways to succeed, and everyone who is successful either works hard or works crazy hard,” Hart said. “There aren’t too many unicorns out there. I’m going to bet we don’t have any unicorns walking through that door.”

After 30 years of professional golf, some might expect Hart to come into coaching and focus on flawed swings.

Instead, Hart focused on the mental side of golf.

He would tell his players to take a minute before they closed their eyes at night to think about what they needed to do the following day, whether it was a workout or a round of golf or a practice session.

“I spent my whole life learning how to practice and how to be prepared,” Hart said. “I learned a lot from the grandfather of golf psychology Bob Rotella. I feel like I am more qualified to explain how to play golf than how to swing the club.

“I was talking to a teaching pro the other day and he said, ‘I have a Ph.D. in the golf swing, and you have a Ph.D. in playing golf.’”

When Hart was hired full-time, I could not have been happier. He and I have talked over the years, and I remember sitting in a Beef O’Brady’s parking lot interviewing him because he had just returned my call after he was named the PGA Tour’s Comeback Player of the Year.

Now, he’s come back again.

He’s home, at least until someone snatches him up to be a head coach.

“It’s the No. 1 question I get from recruits,” he said. “They want to know if I’m going to be around. But I don’t think I would have thought about getting into this if the job at MY school had not opened up.

“I want to be excited when I get out of bed in the morning. I want to do something that makes me happy.”

All that was left after our conversation was a couple of quick mini-lessons. The one he gave me didn’t take, but that’s a “me” problem. He moved on to a Gator student-athlete who is among the best in the country.

This was a day that made Dudley Hart very happy – once he got out of his office.