Sept. 14, 2007
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Vanderbilt women’s golf head coach Greg Allen responds to your “Ask A ‘Dore” questions submitted online earlier this week.
How has living in Nashville and working at Vanderbilt been since you joined the Commodores?
“Living in Nashville has been great. I grew up about two hours north of here in Kentucky, so this part of the country is my home. I love the people and the landscape in this city. I’m living with a buddy right now, so I don’t feel like I’m settled in just yet, but I think the most important thing for me right now is to get my family here. They’ll arrive at the end of October and we’re going to have a baby in January. There will be a lot of exciting times for the Allen family in the next few months. Some trying times, but the people here have been good about helping me out, and I’m sure they’ll do the same when my wife and kids get here. Working with Vanderbilt has been very good. The academic standards are unlike anything I’ve ever been around. The campus is beautiful. It’s been neat for me to show recruits what Vanderbilt is all about, and I’m learning just as much as I’m showing. I’m excited and look forward to a long career here.”
You are taking over a program that has already shown that it can be one of the top programs in the nation. How do you plan to not only keep the momentum going that the program has from recent years, but also bring the program to the next level (winning a national championship)?
“Martha (Richards) did such a great job with building this program and getting the type of players that can compete at a high level in the classroom and on the golf course. I want to keep doing that: recruiting the type of players that can be successful at Vanderbilt. I think Vanderbilt is a top 20 school and a top 10 golf program. Winning the national championship is certainly a goal of ours this year. It’s a team right now that has some senior leadership. We’re led by Jacqui Concolino, a junior, who got beat in qualifying this week by Liebelei (Lawrence). I think anytime you have competition within your team, it carries over to tournament play. I’m looking forward to starting the season this weekend.”
Do you think your team can compete for a SEC Championship this season?
“It’s different coming from the PAC-10. We always thought our conference was the best, and we knew the SEC was strong, but I’m going to kind of change my tune and say the SEC is the best conference with the PAC-10 being pretty close. Georgia, Auburn, Florida, Tennessee, LSU, Alabama, from top to bottom, it’s so strong. I think we have six or seven teams that have the chance to make the national championship and eight or nine teams to qualify for postseason play. I think we have a realistic chance to win the conference championship this year. With it being my first time in the SEC, playing in an SEC Championship will be a little different, but you still tee it up the same way and have to get the ball in the hole. That’s the bottom line. At Arizona, we played a pretty good national schedule, so we got to compete against Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Georgia, Auburn, and Florida almost every week. I feel like I know the coaches pretty well and have seen the players a lot. The way our sport works, you can’t stop a team from playing well. You have to take care of your business. If our five girls play to the best of their ability, then we can compete with anybody in the country.”
How do you teach your freshman “mental toughness?”
“The types of players we recruit at this level are already getting some of that at the junior level. This sport has become where players are getting quality golf instruction at a young age. They work with strength and conditioning coaches and sport psychologists before college. I think the biggest thing for freshmen is not the adjustment from junior to college golf but the way they handle time management and studying. In college, we’re traveling during school for both fall and spring seasons. Junior golfers never missed school because competition was during the summer, so I think the biggest adjustment for them is to have balance and use their time wisely. By doing that, it makes you mentally tougher. We have a great strength and conditioning coach, and I think a lot of what we tried to do at Arizona was build mental toughness in the weight room by doing cardio or by simply being with the team. I think the other mental things we do is to get them confident in their game. Every time they go tee it up they know they have done everything to prepare to play their absolute best.”
Do you have any advice for younger golfers?
“I think the most important thing for young people getting into this sport is to simply enjoy it. It can take up so much of your time and be stressful when getting into competitive rounds, but get to enjoy it. Also, proper instruction is important. Learn how to swing the clubs the right way. Make sure you have the right equipment. A lot of young people go out and play with their mom’s or dad’s hand-me-downs, and it’s not the right equipment for them.
What leadership advice do you have for someone in charge of a team whether it’s in sports or the business world?
“When serving as a leader, I love to listen to my players and assistant coach, take it all in, and make my decision. I hardly ever try to make a decision without getting good advice, and as a head coach, I don’t think there’s any better advice than listening to your team. It may not be what you go with, but I like to know what they’re thinking. I like to make everyday fun. We want to work hard every single day, but make it enjoyable. You want to get out of bed and have the best experience of your life because life is short. We’ve learned that at Arizona. We lost one of our best women’s basketball players one year, and it made me take a good hard look at what I do. I know it’s not all about winning and losing. It’s about doing the absolute best you can each day and making the people around you better in golf and in life. For me, I enjoy the day and blessings I have and know when I go home, I have a wife and three kids that don’t care if we win or lose.”
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Where would you say Jacqui Concolino ranks up there with golfers you’ve coached?
“I haven’t got to coach her in tournament play yet, but watching her practice, at workouts, and seeing her intensity and excitement, that part of it is as good as anybody I’ve coached. She brings it every single day. She loves to compete, and that’s what I saw with Lorena (Ochoa), (Natalie) Gulbis, and Erica Blasberg. Those girls loved to compete, and Jacqui loves to get out there, mix it up, and battle. I’m excited to get to coach her this weekend and get to know her. That’s what I want to do this fall semester: just get to know the girls and see how they play on the golf course and in tournament rounds. I want to see what they need on the golf course. I feel like sometimes you can almost overcoach players in golf because it’s an individual sport and some players want to be left alone. Other players want you to act like a caddy and walk with them. She has a chance to do some really special things in the next two years. She’s already accomplished a lot so far, but I think she wants to be the very best player in collegiate golf before she takes it to the next level. There’s a lot of good players out there this year, so she has her work cut out for her, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been around a player that can bring it the way she brings it every day.”
What’s your favorite golf course and why?
“This job and the job I had before allowed me to go to some really great golf courses. It’s hard to go against Augusta National. I haven’t played it, but I’ve been there to watch that tournament. What stands out about Augusta is its tradition and history. It’s the first major of the season and is played there every year. It’s also hard to beat the beauty of Pebble Beach. I’d say my favorite course in Nashville is Legend’s.”
Are you excited about opening the season this weekend on Vanderbilt’s home course?
“I’m really excited. This team has made it very easy for me to get settled in. I wish we had a little more time. As golf coaches, you’re normally running your own event. We’ve been busy trying to make things happen for our tournament (Mason Rudolph Championship), but the team has handled their business. They don’t need to be told what to do. They know what to do and go out there and do it. You only get a chance to play in front of your home fans once, and sometimes that can be good and bad. You can put more pressure on yourself to go out there and play well for the fans, but for us, having the chance to showcase our golf course to the top 15 teams in the country is exciting. We feel like Vanderbilt is the place to be right now: academically and as a golfer. We want to put on a good show and come Sunday, we want to have a chance to win. That’s our goal every single tournament is to have a chance to win when that final round rolls around. Come May, when you go to play for the national championship, it seems like a long year, but we want to be fresh every time we go out and play. Once we got our team decided through qualifying on Sunday, we decided to take it easy this week. We continue to get use to the golf course so we’re mentally prepared. As our strength coach Curtis says, `get your mind right for Friday morning,’ and that’s what we’ve been doing this week. This weekend should be a great test for us and there’s nothing like getting started against the best.”