Legendary Georgia Tech head coach Bruce Heppler estimates he spent three years of his life following Ryan Hybl around when Hybl was the top-ranked junior in the country, a three-time AJGA first-team All-American and the association\u2019s player of the year in 1998. Heppler estimates he watched Hybl play 100,000 holes, spending so much time around Hybl that he once saw Hybl\u2019s mom pick up one of her son\u2019s clubs on the range and hit a few balls.<\/p>\n
Hybl, of course, decided to play for the Yellow Jackets\u2019 rival, Georgia.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut luckily,\u201d Heppler says now, \u201cwe got him the second time around.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a move that sent shockwaves through the sport on Sunday afternoon, Hybl agreed to succeed Heppler as Georgia Tech\u2019s head men\u2019s golf coach, leaving Oklahoma after 17 seasons that included the 2017 NCAA Championship among 51 wins.<\/p>\n
Hybl\u2019s decision comes just days before the Sooners, who captured last week\u2019s NCAA Corvallis Regional, are set to compete in the NCAA Championship, which starts Friday at Omni La Costa in Carlsbad, California. Hybl will coach Oklahoma at nationals before assistant Jonathan Moore takes over the head position for the Sooners.<\/p>\n
Georgia Tech did not qualify for nationals, ending the legendary, 31-year career of Heppler, who announced his retirement earlier this season. While Georgia Tech still has not won a national championship in men\u2019s golf, Heppler led the Yellow Jackets to 22 NCAA finals and four national runner-up finishes while coaching several future PGA Tour players, including college players of the year Matt Kuchar, Bryce Molder and Troy Matteson.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be entrusted with leading a program with such a rich tradition, and to take the torch from one of the greatest coaches in the history of our sport in Coach Heppler, is truly humbling,\u201d Hybl said. \u201c\u2026 I\u2019m honored to be the head coach at an institution that has such a deep commitment to golf. It is a commitment that very few places in the nation can rival.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hybl added that his ties to Georgia \u2013 he is from Colbert, Georgia, and still has family in the state, including his parents, and brother, Nate, and his family \u2013 played a role in his decision to leave Norman, Oklahoma. It was long believed that Hybl, who is already a member of the GCAA Hall of Fame, would eventually replace longtime Georgia head coach Chris Haack, but when Haack also announced his impending retirement this spring, Hybl was not considered by the Bulldogs, who quickly promoted assistant and alumnus Mookie DeMoss as Haack\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an opportunity for my family and me to come home,\u201d Hybl said. \u201cWe\u2019ve missed out on a lot of special moments with our family in Georgia over the years, and we couldn\u2019t pass up the opportunity to not only lead such a great, historic program, but to do it at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heppler, who is from Utah and plans to move back to his home state this summer, understands that motive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve lived away from my family forever and was not there for my parents, who have both passed,\u201d Heppler said. \u201cThere were some really tough times there, taking care of elderly parents, and that fell on my brother and my sisters, and I always felt bad about that. \u2026 His folks are from here, his brother is here, and I just think at times in your life, we go off and do things that sometimes takes us away from family, and I just think it became a really big thing for he and his wife to figure out a way to spend more time with their parents and family members now. We got lucky that they live in Georgia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also feel extremely proud that even though family was here, but I do know at Oklahoma, they\u2019ve given him the resourced where obviously he\u2019s won the whole thing before, and as much as family mattered \u2026 I don\u2019t think he would\u2019ve come home if he thought the best he could do was 10th in the country. I think he believes the infrastructure here is good enough that if he gets after it, he can win another one here.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear if Hybl will take any players with him; Walker Cupper Jase Summy is among just two players graduating, while junior Ryder Cowan, a finalist for the Haskins Award, highlights the crop of Sooners with eligibility remaining. Georgia Tech loses 2024 NCAA individual champion Hiroshi Tai and two other seniors, Ben Reuter and Aidan Tran.<\/p>\n
Heppler sold his condo in Atlanta last Wednesday and plans to move into his new home, which is nearly complete, in Utah this summer. He says he\u2019ll stick around until then to assist Hybl in the transition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told my wife that we can go get in that car now and drive to Utah and I\u2019m not worried about the guys left behind and the program because I believe we\u2019ve just hired the best coach in Division I golf,\u201d Heppler said. \u201cAll this that we built and all the work that we\u2019ve done and the success, I don\u2019t have to worry about it going away. When you raise a child and you worry about who they\u2019re going to marry, I ain\u2019t worried about it anymore. We found a very productive man to take over.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legendary Georgia Tech head coach Bruce Heppler estimates he spent three years of his life following Ryan Hybl…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-663536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}