North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: A Will To Learn
7/26/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
July 26, 2010
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. - In the final days of her LPGA Tour playing days, Maggie Will would chat with her fellow professional golfers around the lockerroom about how great - and easy - it would be to have a job as a college golf coach.
A little recruiting here. Some instruction on the range there. Follow a few people around the course during a tournament. It sounded like the easy life to a group of players who spent most of their days traveling from event to event, with grueling hours of practice, play and pro-ams in places they may not remember.
But only a few weeks into her job as an assistant to NC State women's golf coach Page Marsh, the former three-time winner on the LPGA Tour has discovered just how badly she and the other players were mistaken.
"We thought, compared to what we were doing, that it would be easy," Will said, smiling. "I am now anxious to phone them all and e-mail them and let them know that they have it made. This has been very exciting and eye-opening."
Will has long known she wanted to work with young players. In the last year, she's applied for several college coaching positions in the southeast. But on almost every occasion, she was told she needed more real-world coaching experience. So she spent last year working as a volunteer assistant at Virginia Commonwealth, reintroducing herself to the world of intercollegiate golf for the first time since she was a player at Furman in the mid-1980s.
Last February, she spent a little time with Marsh and the Wolfpack, while they were participating in a tournament in Florida. Marsh and Will go back a long way, to the time when they were 10-year-old junior golfers competing in the same events, which were usually organized and conducted by Marsh's mother, Linda.
Will, a native of Whiteville, was all set to follow Marsh to North Carolina after her high school career, but diverted her attention instead to the nationally prominent program at Furman in Greenville, S.C. At the time, there was no bigger hotbed for women's college golf, thanks to the legacy of players like Betsy King, Beth Daniel and Sherri Turner.
Will played on the same team as future LPGA Tour star Dottie Pepper, and the Paladins finished three strokes away from a national championship Will's sophomore season in 1985 and one stroke away as a senior in 1987. Like her predecessors, Will moved on to the LPGA Tour, where she won three tournaments from 1990-94.
In 21 years as a professional, Will finished in the top 10 a total of 19 team times and posted career earning of nearly $1.3 million.
Though she is still eligible to play on the LPGA Tour, she's competed in just 23 events in the last four seasons. She has not played any tournaments this season, while making the transition into her next career as a coach and instructor.
"This has been a big step for me," Will said. "I could still play this year, but I have chosen not to. I think I have played five rounds of golf since January because I am concentrating on learning everything I need to know.
"I can't soak in enough of it right now. I want to be at least a sophomore [in knowledge] when the team comes in this August. Right now, I am very much a freshman. I still have a lot to learn."
But, Marsh believes, Will also has a lot to offer to the Wolfpack women's program. As a long-time professional, Will has contacts throughout the world of women's golf and obviously has the technical knowledge to instruct players.
"I am excited for our program that she brings the experience she has on Tour, someone who has refined the game enough that she played it for a living and done it at a really high level," Marsh said. "She has had to look at each and every element of the game, whether it is mental or physical, and do it for a long period of time.
"She brings a wealth of golf knowledge to our program."
Marsh played professionally for just nine months before deciding she would rather play as a high-level amateur instead of leading the life of a touring pro. So her perspective is a little different than Will's.
"I went a different route than Maggie," Marsh said. "What I hope our players can learn from us both is that there are many opportunities at both levels. You can play forever as an amateur. You can get involved in volunteering at various levels through the [United States Golf Association]. You can play as a professional.
"We have different experiences. I think our backgrounds complement each other nicely."
But Will is just trying to ride the seemingly large learning curve. She's been on the road recruiting and watching some of the current Wolfpack players in summer tournaments, both in the United States and in Canada. In between, she's getting settled in the Triangle, learning about the Wolfpack's new home at the Lonnie Poole Golf Course and preparing for her first full academic year at NC State.
"I kind of have a grasp on it," she said, "but not as much as I will have a month from now or a year from now."
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
