Iron Mike

Columbus, Ohio

September 24–25, 1994

At forty-six years old, Mike Holder was the unquestioned

dean of college golf, as recognizable in his sport as Bobby Knight

was in the world of college basketball and Joe Paterno in college

football. His focus was so acute, his intensity so singular, he was

oblivious to the whispers that followed him from the parking lot

to the clubhouse to the practice range at the Scarlet Course, site

of the early-season Ping Preview tournament in late September of

1994, whispers that defined a legacy that towered over his sport like

a monument.

Whether he was scouting or coaching, everybody on the course

knew the man with the expressionless face and orange wraparound

sunglasses, resting beneath a thick mop of reddish blond hair. His

was the most familiar pose in college golf. "Look, it’s Mike Holder,"

they would say, the respect discernible in their voices, the news

spreading through the gallery. When he was recruiting at American

Junior Golf Association events, people followed him just to see

which player he had come to see. It was a great compliment for a

junior player to know that Holder was watching. Galleries parted

when he passed through, which also spoke to his natural ability to

intimidate.

He put people off, made them feel uncomfortable. It had always

been that way. You might find yourself getting to know college golf ’s

mystery man at one tournament only to have him walk past without

a word or a look of recognition two weeks later. Just because he

was scouting a potential recruit on the practice range didn’t mean

he wanted to engage in friendly conversation with the recruit’s parents.

He was often referred to as arrogant, aloof, or worse.

Holder didn’t worry about what other people thought of him.

He was the embodiment of Oklahoma tough. To him, golf wasn’t

a country club sport. He was disciplined, demanding, and determined

to push players to their limits both mentally and physically.

He made them qualify in the rawest weather, made grueling earlymorning

workouts mandatory, and considered character building

the most important part of his job, which wasn’t always the most

popular approach in a sport where athletes were often coddled as in

no other.

At different stages of his career Holder made players run laps

for hitting balls out of bounds and do pushups for three-putting

greens. He loved Oklahoma State’s other dominant sport — wrestling

— and impromptu greenside matches between player and

coach were not uncommon. He had once angrily and, he believed,

justifiably bloodied Bob Tway’s nose in a wrestling match moments

before Tway was to tee off in the first round of a tournament.

His players learned about excellence from being around him. He

strove to operate with integrity and did everything to the best of his

ability. Mostly, he did things his way. If his players preferred some

other way, he would refer to the major north-south highway that

splits the state. "I-Thirty-five," he would say slowly, looking his target

right in the eye, his accent so purely Oklahoma it could double

as a voice-over for the state department of tourism, "goes both

ways."

No wonder other college golf coaches referred to him, behind his

back, as the "Great Iron Fist of the Midwest."

He preached the basic tenets: Be on time, go to class, tell the

truth, give 100 percent, play one shot at a time, conduct yourself

with class, stay physically fit, and never make excuses. Any player in

need of discipline could expect to run steps inside the football stadium

at sunrise.

Everything he did was designed to make his players better. He

dared them to be great, in the classroom and on the course, in everything

they did. If you were going to play for Mike Holder, being

average was not an option.

All this contributed to Holder’s status as his sport’s most controversial

and dominant figure and, by far, the least understood.

Holder was the John Wayne of college golf, but to define him

as one-dimensional failed to acknowledge his complexity. He was

also perhaps the greatest innovator college golf had ever seen. He

ran his program as if it were a Fortune 500 corporation and he

the CEO. He had won six national championships, ten fewer than

legendary former University of Houston coach Dave Williams,

the dynasty builder who dominated college golf for thirty-six

years. But Holder’s overall contribution to the sport was perhaps

greater.

Williams reinvented the game and became known as the "Father

of College Golf." Holder reinvented it again and again, in ways dramatic

and subtle, forcing those who wished to compete with him

to adopt his model and methods. Although the fi rst intercollegiate

golf tournament was held in 1897, and although no coach will likely

win more titles than Williams, Holder was, in many ways, college

golf s first modern coach.

He was the first to take the same microscopic approach to his

sport that is common in football and basketball, single-handedly

ending an era when golf coaches simply "drove the van," or shuttled

players from tournament to tournament. As his teams continued to

win, opposing coaches, albeit reluctantly and sometimes even unknowingly,

would do as Holder did, and soon what seemed like a

radical idea would become a standard practice.

At a time when most college coaches did their recruiting by

phone or simply welcomed players who arrived on their doorstep,

Holder became a fixture at American Junior Golf Association

events, always making sure he was the first coach to arrive in the

morning and the last to leave at night. He spent ten weeks each

summer scouring the nation and beyond for the best talent and

forced others to do the same.

The equipment kept improving. So did instruction. Holder was

convinced his athletes had to improve as well, and that meant they

had to be in better physical condition. He made demanding, thriceweekly

6:30 a.m. aerobics sessions mandatory.

Opposing coaches criticized him and his workouts while competing

for recruits. "If you go to OSU you’ll have to do aerobics,"

they would say. But within a few short years virtually every top program

had adopted a conditioning program.

Holder didn’t ask his players to do anything he didn’t do himself.

He worked out right along with them, never missing a session,

pushing the instructor to push his players — and himself — to their

limits and beyond. On days when there were no aerobics, he and his

stepping machine waged epic battles. Holder was a workout fi end,

and the stepping machine was his torture device of choice. It was

man versus machine in a daily pitched battle of wills. Holder wasn’t

going to quit. As long as the electricity held out, the machine wasn’t

going to quit either.

The sport had experienced a major transformation during the

two-plus decades Holder coached the Cowboys. Much of it was because

of him. When Holder started coaching, coaches rarely watched

their teams compete in tournaments. On the contrary, fearing their

presence might disrupt their players, they often left the grounds

altogether, sometimes even getting together with other coaches to

play a different course. Holder remained close to the action. He began

lingering near the par 3s to offer advice on club selection during

the early 1980s and had recently started walking entire rounds

with players in an attempt to steady