Larry Legend: For longtime Clemson golf coach, the time is right to call it a career

He drives to work on a road that honors one of his proteges to a building that bears his name and operates out of an office rich in memorabilia.

“This first ACC one means a lot,” he says, pointing to a trophy. “The last one’s pretty special, too.”

Together, those symbols of success bookend his career and pretty much sum up Larry Penley.

He could coach then, in 1987, his fourth year at the helm of Clemson’s men’s golf program. And he can coach now, in 2021, his 38th.

But, at the age of 62, he’s ready to bow out and walk away into the sunset after the Tigers’ run in the NCAA National Championship ends in the next few days in Scottsdale, Arizona.

“I remember telling (legendary Clemson baseball coach) Bill Wilhelm that he had too much to left to step down,” Penley said prior to his team’s trip to Arizona. “He told me, ‘You’ll know when it’s time,’ and he was right. The time’s right for me now.”

If the Tigers could live up to their lofty billing and forge a fairy-tale finish in the nationals, that would be perfect.

Penley’s path to Clemson

“Perfect” is the word to describe the circumstances that brought Penley to Clemson, said former golf coach Bobby Robinson, who recruited the future hall-of-famer twice.

“A perfect storm,” Robinson said in recounting the events from 44 years ago.

To become a Clemson legend, Penley first needed to find Clemson.

A native of Dallas, North Carolina, he probably would have landed at either Wake Forest or North Carolina, but unsettled coaching situations at both schools led him to look elsewhere.

Penley visited Clemson and said he knew almost nothing about the area and the university.

“Well, all I knew was (basketball star) Tree Rollins,” Penley said. “I remember (Duke’s) Mike Gminski trying to shoot over Tree and Tree batting the ball into the stands. But one visit and I fell in love with the place.”

The first perfect storm.

He played four years (1977-78 through 1980-81), helping Clemson to a 12th-place finish in the 1980 nationals and winning two tournaments en route to All-ACC honors his senior season.

Two courses short of his degree, he tackled professional golf with a $5,000 loan guaranteed by his dad. He made enough to pay off the loan, “but I fell out of love” with golf, he said.

“To be a pro means a lot of travel and practice and you think, ‘Man, that’s hard work,’ and I didn’t work hard enough to succeed,” Penley said.

Robinson entered his life again. On the fast track up the ladder in Clemson’s athletic administration, he sought Penley to be his assistant coach.

“I had more responsibilities than coaching golf, and Larry was just what we were looking for,” said Robinson, who would later become the Tigers’ athletic director. “He is a dynamic recruiter, low key and sincere. We knew he could establish our program, and he did.”

Another perfect storm.

Clemson grows into golf power

Penley did not necessarily share Robinson’s confidence, but he finished requirements for his degree and got acclimated to coaching during Robinson’s final season.

“I didn’t set out to do this, not at all. I was just happy to have a job,” Penley said. “The year I was an assistant, the seniors had been freshmen my senior year. I had to tell them, ‘Do as I say, not as I did.’ ”

But he put together a five-year plan, won the ACC title in the fourth and doubts disappeared. He opened a pipeline of high-quality players and the program blossomed into a national powerhouse.

“His record speaks for itself,” said Steve Liebler, who played at USC at the same time Penley played at Clemson and later coached the Gamecocks against Penley’s Tigers. “If I had a son with the potential to play at that level, I would want him to play for Larry Penley. He’s one of the great college coaches.”

To magnify the praise a Carolina coach has for a Clemson rival, consider this: Liebler nominated Penley for induction into the South Carolina Golf Hall of Fame.

“Never did we not want to see the other one excel,” Liebler said.

Indeed, Penley, with his roster full, recommended Michael Christie to Liebler — and Liebler calls Christie the third best player, behind Carl Paulson and Brett Quigley, that he coached at Carolina.

And in 1991, after USC won the Metro Conference title, Penley led the lobbying for the Gamecocks to be included in the national tournament. “We went to California and finished ninth,” Liebler said. “We’d never have gotten in without Larry.”

Meanwhile, Penley’s Clemson teams had taken a place in the national spotlight. A foul-up among tournament officials dropped the Tigers from second to third and cost Kevin Johnson the individual title in the 1989 NCAAs, but the victories piled up.

The Tigers finished second nationally in 1998 and 2001 before winning the championship in 2003 with all the players from South Carolina.

The Tigers’ national championship team became the first college squad to win its conference, regional and national tournament in the same year, and, All-American Charles Warren said, “The winning is no accident.”

Penley ‘a second father to many players’

Penley’s desire to succeed is no secret — he wants to win.

In recruiting, “I tell parents, ‘Let us coach,’ and they do,” he said. “I also tell them there is no greater honor or privilege than parents letting us have their kids.”

Then?

“(Players) find out very quickly I’m the most competitive person they will ever meet,” he said. “I tell them, ‘You have to work, and work hard, and if you can’t handle that, you need to be somewhere else.’ ”

But, Warren said: “He knows how to get the most out of his players. He knows who needs to be treated with kid gloves and who needs to get his butt kicked.”

Jonathan Byrd, another in the long line of All-Americans and future pros, echoed the idea that Penley has a magic touch with players.

“I’m very blessed to have played for him,” Byrd said. “He’s just enough hands on and just enough hands off. He could get fired up, that’s for sure. Plenty of times I got an earful from him. I needed it and I’m thankful for it.”

The result?

“Clemson golf is a family,” Warren said.

And never is that more obvious than at the Tiger Golf Gathering, a fund-raiser to benefit Clemson men’s and women’s golf, Clemson’s golf management program and the South Carolina Junior Golf Foundation.

Warren came up with the idea, enlisted support from Byrd and Lucas Glover, and the goal of raising funds to upgrade the short-game practice area soon developed into far more.

“We wanted to give back,” Warren said. “People don’t see the camaraderie and bonds that develop among the players, but it’s there and he’s a second father to many players. I know when me called and asked did I want to be a Tiger, that changed my life.

“He will always be Clemson golf.”

All teams want success, and the bar is high at Clemson. For Penley’s program, success “is a process. Fun and focus and enjoyment. They know the goals.”

Warren embraced the concept and developed into a PGA Tour player. He recalls knowing that Penley would be on hand to watch a high school match and he arrived at Oak Hills to find the greens aerated.

“I thought, ‘He’s going to see me miss two-foot putts,’ ” Warren said.

He fretted in vain; he shot 4-under-par 32 for the nine-hole match. In fact, ask Penley today his best player and Charles Warren is the first name he cites.

“That’s such a hard question, but look at high-level college results and that’s nobody better than Charles Warren,” Penley said. “He won two ACCs. He won one national (individual) championship and was runner-up in another. Maybe not always in regular tournaments, but he showed up in the big ones.

“Kyle Stanley finished second twice in the NCAAs twice and won the Ben Hogan Award. D.J. (Trahan) brought it every week. His junior season was as good as I have seen. He won three of four times, broke a lot of records and was ‘there’ every time.”

Sounds like Clemson’s program. Penley’s Tigers are almost always “there.”

Retirement goals

Penley got his love for athletics and competition naturally. His dad played fast-pitch softball — with Larry the bat boy — and his mom averaged 32 points a game in basketball during the 3-on-3 style of the time.

“I played everything and began focusing on golf in the 11th grade,” he said. “I got competitive around age 15 or 16,” regained his amateur status after his fling with the pros and, among other titles, won two South Carolina Amateurs and a couple of Mid-Amateurs.

“In the 1980s, I would get their attention by beating them,” Penley said and laughed. “True story: The year (Clemson player) Chris Patton won the U.S. Amateur (1989), I led the local qualifying in Orangeburg and Chris got the last qualifying spot. He was that close to not making the big tournament.

“We got to Merion (Golf Club) and I’m in a playoff for the last spot in match play. I got beat, but if I had won, the draw would have had Chris and I playing each other in the first round. I kid him now and tell him how lucky he was.”

Penley considers himself lucky, too, and that’s the reason for his retirement. The time, he said, has come to give back to his family.

“(Wife) Heidi did such a wonderful job with our children,” he said. “I didn’t have an assistant coach for 23 years, and that meant I was on the road a lot. That’s not going to happen to the grandkids.

“The family is all around here. The grandkids are going to have golf clubs in their hands or we’ll be fishing or shooting sporting clays. We’ll do whatever they want to do.”

He and Heidi will make some football road trips and he hopes to rediscover his own golf game.

Before then, though, one more chapter remains to be written on the journey that began with his “falling in love” with Clemson.

“Working with this team has been a blast,” he said. And if the Tigers bring home another trophy in the NCAA ... well, that would be perfect, one more perfect storm.

Larry Penley bio

Born: Feb. 14, 1959, in Dallas, North Carolina

Family: Married the former Heidi Grove; they have two daughters, Kelsey Lou and Mollie Ashton, and a son, Andrew William (Drew). Grandchildren: Ellie, Mason, Mills, Maddox, and one more arriving in September.

Education: Earned Bachelor’s degree in administrative management from Clemson University in 1983.

Playing experience: Member of Clemson team from 1977-78 through 1980-81; First-team All-ACC selection in 1980-81; Iron Duke Classic Champion in 1981; Southeastern Intercollegiate Champion in 1981; South Carolina Amateur Champion in 1987 and 1988; Carolinas Golf Association Mid-Amateur Champion in 1992; South Carolina Mid-Amateur Champion in 1990.

Assistant coach Experience: Assistant coach at Clemson under Bobby Robinson in 1982-83; Clemson finished fifth in the nation at the NCAA tournament.

Head coach experience: Clemson University, 1983-84 to present.

Major honors: Dave Williams National Coach of the Year in 2003; Golfweek National Coach of the Year in 2003; ACC Coach of the Year in 1987, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2016, 2021.

Major championships: National Champions in 2003; NCAA East Regional Champions in 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004; ACC Champions in 1987, 1988, 1990, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2016, 2021.

MAJOR COACHING ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Holds NCAA record for NCAA Regional Championships with seven. Has had a pair of NCAA Regional Championship “Three-Peats.”
• Has taken Clemson to 10 ACC Championships, including an 11-stroke win in 2016 and the 2021 championship through match play.
• First coach in history of college golf to take a Division I program to conference, NCAA Regional and NCAA National Championship in the same year.
• Has won 83 tournaments in his 38 years as Clemson head coach, an ACC record.
• Led Clemson to a top 10 finish seven consecutive years (1997-03).
• Has been named ACC Coach of the Year seven times.
• Named National Coach of the Year in 2003.
• Inducted into the College Golf Hall of Fame in 2004 at age 44, the first active coach in Clemson history to be inducted into a Hall of Fame and one of the youngest inductees on record.
• Named to South Carolina Golf Hall of Fame in 2009.
• Has coached United States Public Links Champions Kevin Johnson (1987), D.J. Trahan (2000) and Corbin Mills (2011), US Amateur Champions Chris Patton (1989) and Doc Redman (2017), and NCAA Champion Charles Warren (1997).
• An accomplished golfer, he was a first-team All-ACC selection as a senior in 1981 when he had five top 10 finishes, including a pair of victories. Played on Clemson’s first NCAA tournament team in 1980. Two-time South Carolina Amateur Champion.
• Has taken Clemson to the NCAA tournament all 37 years there has been a tournament during his 38 years as head coach, including 21 consecutive appearances in the national finals (1984-04). Has led Clemson to 25 top 20 finishes

This story was originally published May 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.