(Editor's note: This is the first in a series of feature profiles on this year's Hall of Fame inductees and Wall of Honor selections that will be posted every Monday, leading up to the Sept. 21 Hall of Fame Banquet.)

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

Growing up playing on a nine-hole golf course in Alvin, Texas, Tim Hobby never dreamed of becoming a pro golfer, playing in the Masters and U.S. Open, coaching at his alma mater or being inducted into the Baylor Hall of Fame.

Having checked off everything else on that list, along with teaching at The Club at Sonterra for the last 15 years, Hobby is part of the 2018 class for the Baylor Hall of Fame that will be inducted Sept. 21.

"It's just a lot of hard work over the years that kind of paid off," said the 51-year-old Hobby, who led Baylor to its only Big 12 men's golf championship in 2001 after winning four individual tournament titles as a player (1987-90).

"I really want to thank my players at Baylor. Especially all the guys early on that said 'yes' to me to come and take a chance on Baylor and a new coach like myself who maybe knew what he was doing, maybe he didn't. Those guys just bought in."
Hobby didn't exactly take a direct route to Baylor. One of the top basketball and golf recruits in the state coming out of Alvin High School, where he averaged 24 points per game as a senior, Hobby originally signed a golf scholarship at the University of Houston with legendary coach Dave Williams.

"Coach Williams was such a great recruiter, he convinced me I was going to be the next Fred Couples," he said. "When I showed up, there were about 20 of us there who all thought the same thing. About six or eight weeks into it – they had just won two national championships in a row – I said, 'I'm on the second five here, and I'm not going to be able to qualify for many of these tournaments.'''

While playing pick-up basketball games at night, a former Houston Cougar told Hobby, "Man, you've got some game. You should be playing for our basketball team."

Hall of Fame coach Guy Lewis, who had recruited him for basketball, was quick to add the 6-foot-2 shooting guard to his roster.

"Unfortunately, that was Coach Lewis' last year. I played about half the games my freshman year and didn't get a ton of playing time. I would just go in when they needed some outside shooting," Hobby said.

The next year, playing for new coach Pat Foster, Hobby was in the starting lineup alongside future NBA players Greg "Cadillac" Anderson, Rickie Winslow, Randy Brown and Rolando Ferreira for a team that lost to Kansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. In the first year of the 3-point line, he hit nine treys in a win over SMU and seven against TCU and averaged 7.0 points per game for the Cougars.

After that season, though, he had a change of heart and decided to go back to his golf roots and transfer to Baylor.

"I had Lee Hartman, C.A. Roberts and some other guys at Baylor who were friends of mine," he said. "I talked to Coach (Gene) Shields and tried to talk him into letting me come to Waco. He was nice enough to give me the opportunity, and the rest happened after that."

In three years at Baylor, Hobby won four individual tournament titles, set then-program records for most top-10 (nine) and top-five (seven) finishes and earned All-Southwest Conference and honorable mention All-America honors. He also helped the Bears to a runner-up finish at the Southwest Conference tournament in 1989 and their first NCAA Regional tournament in 23 years as a senior in 1990, averaging a team-best 74.29 strokes per round.

"My junior year, we lost the Southwest Conference at Columbia Lakes in Houston by one stroke (to Texas)," he said. "If we could have won the conference, I could have had a ring as a player at Baylor and another ring as a coach at Baylor."
While playing at Baylor, he also won the 1989 U.S. Public Links Championship and earned an invitation to play in the prestigious Masters at Augusta National the next year.

"It took a while for me to work off the rust that had settled on my swing," he said. "I didn't play much golf when I was part of the basketball team at UofH. But, in the spring of 1989, something clicked while I was practicing with the golf team and I started hitting it really well. That was the momentum that took me to the win at the Public Links Championship and changed my golf life forever."

After five tries at PGA Tour Qualifying School and five years on various golf mini-tours, Hobby got a call from his former college roommate about Shields retiring.

"When you're playing golf, you always think you're going to make it," he said. "But, I always told my wife (Darcy) that I wanted to give it a good five years. . . . . We were living in Orlando (Florida), and it sounded like a good excuse to move back to Texas. I said that if I didn't make the (PGA) Tour, I wanted to try to be a college coach."

And what better place than your alma mater, in the same year it was entering the Big 12 Conference? But, he was taking over a program that had finished last at the conference tournament four times in the previous six years and made just one regional since Hobby's senior season.

"If you know the game of golf and you can work with kids and recruit and sell them on the vision you have for the program," Hobby said, "and the university supports you, it's not like head coaching experience in say football or basketball where there's a lot of game management going on. Most of the coaching in college golf is done before the tournament and during the practice rounds. Once those guys go off on the first tee, hopefully they know what they're doing."

In seven years as the head coach, Hobby led the Bears to 17 team tournament championships, the only Big 12 title in program history (2001), 14 individual medalist honors and six consecutive NCAA regionals. He was named the Big 12 and District VI Coach of the Year in 2001, when Baylor won the conference championship by 10 strokes.

"That Big 12 championship team, we had Jimmy Walker from New Braunfels, Worth Williams from Rockwall, Brandon Sanders from San Angelo, Adam Meyer from Waco and Jon Antunes from Belton," he said. "Think about that. We just beat the rest of the Big 12, who had not only the best players in the country but the world. They don't just recruit down the street. Oklahoma State had guys from Sweden, Texas had guys from all over, and so did Oklahoma. I find it interesting now that (Baylor coach Mike) McGraw is doing the same thing with Texas guys."

Even after losing Walker and Williams, Hobby led the Bears to their first NCAA Championship appearance in 35 years in 2002, where they placed 19^th. The next year, he stepped away from college coaching to take the teaching position at The Club at Sonterra.

"I think I was just mentally and physically spent," he said. "I had put so much energy into it. Our children were getting older, and you're gone 100 days a year. As soon as you're done with NCAA regionals and nationals in June, you're off on the road recruiting. It just seemed like it never ended. I felt like the program was in a really good spot, and somebody else could take it from there."

Finding his niche as a teacher, Hobby has had more than 60 junior golfers from the Sonterra program go on to play college golf, including Jordan Rhodes and Maggie Beth Byers with the Baylor women's team, Nick Thornton with the Baylor men and incoming freshman Johnny Keefer, "who's going to be a super stud."

Tim and Darcy, a 1991 Baylor grad, have a daughter, Hannah, who is graduating from Baylor this December with a degree in speech pathology; and a son, Andrew, who's a sophomore at Texas A&M.

"(The Hall of Fame induction) actually worked out great," Tim said, "because my daughter is going to graduate in the fall, and she's excited to go on the field (at McLane Stadium) and let her friends see her."

Joining Hobby in the 2018 class are football players Gary Baxter and Ronnie "Bo" Lee, softball All-American Chelsi Lake Reichenstein, volleyball's Elisha Polk, NCAA champion Zuzana Zemenova from women's tennis and longtime trainer Mike Sims.

The Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame banquet will be held at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21, in the Brazos Room at the Waco Convention Center. Tickets costs $50 per person and can be purchased by contacting the "B" Association at 254-710-3045 or by email at Tammy_Hardin@baylor.edu.