Tramel: How OU men's golf coach Ryan Hybl's competitive spirit has taken the Sooners to the NCAA pinnacle
NORMAN — Ryan Hybl walked into one of his first OU head-coaching meetings in 2009.
He looked around the room. There sat Bob Stoops. Sherri Coale. Patty Gasso. Mark Williams. John Roddick.
"All these unbelievable coaches," Hybl said. "And we were literally the worst team on campus."
Some 27-year-olds would be intimidated. Hybl was inspired.
"You talk about lighting a fire," Hybl says 13 years later. "I'm super competitive."
Even to this day, Hybl's Sooner men's golf team, which has become one of the flagship programs in the sport, ranks just No. 3 or No. 4 on Hybl's own campus rankings.
But when athletic director Joe Castiglione holds head-coaching meetings now, young coaches must feel intimidated by the likes of Hybl.
OU golf is a runaway success story. The Sooners won the 2017 NCAA championship. They returned to the match-play finals in 2021. OU is the only program to make each of the last five NCAA quarterfinals, which is when match play begins.
"It's pretty crazy to think about," said Brad Dalke, a two-time all-American for Hybl and the leader of the 2017 title team. "You think football, you think softball, gymnastics. But the golf program's been one of the most dominant sports at OU in the last 5-6 years. He's built something special at OU. Don't think it's stopping anytime soon."
In what was supposed to be a rebuilding season, the Sooners won the Big 12 Tournament on Wednesday in Trinity, Texas, and remain the nation's top-ranked team.
Hybl has elevated OU golf to the unthinkable. When Hybl took over, the Sooners were coming off a season in which they placed 10th in the Big 12 Tournament and were ranked 89th in NCAA golf.
Now OU is on the level of arch-rival OSU, long one of the giants of college golf.
"Just because of that rivalry and their history, it's a tough task to go into Norman as a golf coach and put yourself in the same sentence as the guys from Stillwater," said current Sooner Logan McAllister. "He's helped us use that motivation as a driver of success."
Hybl is the younger brother of former OU quarterback Nate Hybl, the Rose Bowl star from 20 years ago. Ryan Hybl was a junior golf star growing up in Georgia; he was the 1998 American Junior Golf Association player of the year, an award that has gone to the likes of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, David Duval, Scott Verplank, Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler.
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Ryan Hybl even took a recruiting visit to OU in 1999, the year his brother was sitting out the football season after transferring from Georgia. But Ryan Hybl chose Georgia, became a Bulldog star and eventually became a Georgia assistant coach.
In 2009, OSU was trying to entice Hybl as an assistant coach. OU was shopping for a head coach, and Castiglione asked OSU athletic director Mike Holder, one of the most successful golf coaches in NCAA history, for some insight. Holder raved about Hybl, who soon enough blew away Sooner officials in an interview.
"It's crazy," said Larry Naifeh, OU's senior associate athletic director who long oversaw Sooner golf. “He was kind of new to the scene. But I tell you, he was sought after. Either we were going to hire him or somebody else was going to hire him. It wasn't some magic rocket science."
Hybl took over a program that had fallen on hard times in the nine years since Gregg Grost's departure. Grost coached the Sooners to the 1989 NCAA championship, but OU was nowhere near that status in 2009.
"I knew that we were in a really rough spot," Hybl said. "Probably didn't know where we were at. I was only 27 years old. Pretty naive in some spots."
The Sooners' golf facilities were first-rate, even then. In the late '90s, OU completed a massive renovation of the Jimmie Austin Golf Club and built the Charlie Coe Center, a state-of-the-art indoor practice facility. In 2017, the Sooners added the Ransom Short Course, a four-hole layout similar to a par-3 course with varying styles of greens and bunkers.
So commitment to golf rarely has been an issue. But in 2009, success seemed far away. Hybl remembers his first recruiting trip, to a junior event in Missouri. The OU logo didn't pack much punch.
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"It was strange," Hybl said. "I had come from a golf program, we were as good as everybody. It was like people didn't even look at my (OU) logo. Hard to have conversations with kids."
But Hybl started working hard, then struck gold on the recruiting trail with Abraham Ancer, from Odessa Junior College in Texas. Ancer became a star and led the Sooners back to the NCAA Championships. Ancer since has won on the PGA Tour.
"Abe changed our golf program," Hybl said. "That was the beginning."
Then Dalke, an OU legacy and a five-star recruit, committed to the Sooners.
"Allowed some other good players to realize we were changing things in Norman," Hybl said. "When Brad decided this was where he wanted to be, it was big news to the other golfers."
Full disclosure: Dalke is the son of Bill Dalke, an OU linebacker under Barry Switzer in the 1970s. Dalke, who had become a schoolboy phenom in Greater Dallas, was headed to OU no matter the coach or the program.
"I got really lucky," Dalke said. "Could have been (coached by) someone who dug the program down even worse than it was at the time."
After the Big 12 title a few days ago, Dalke texted Hybl: "Coach, I'm so proud to be part of this. Can't believe how far you've brought this program."
Dalke remains one of the few AJGA stars recruited by Hybl. Hybl said that early in his OU career, he saw what a bulldog of a recruiter then-OSU coach Mike McGraw was.
"He knew everybody, he was phenomenal, getting out and about," Hybl said. "I remember sitting with my assistant; 'Why are we trying to beat our heads against the wall? We need to be different.'"
Hybl said he settled on getting as quality of a player as he could find, but also focusing on team chemistry and grit. Players with a chip on their shoulder. Players that might be motivated to be motivated. Hybl calls it understanding who you are.
Quade Cummins arrived in 2015 as a lightly-recruited player out of Weatherford. He stayed six seasons and was a key member of the Sooners' NCAA runner-up team last spring.
Cummins says Hybl is an atypical golf coach. Hybl's father, Tom, was a notable high school football coach in Georgia. Ryan Hybl played multiple sports growing up. He’s competitive like a football coach but relational like a basketball coach.
"He's so involved with every guy,” Cummins said. “I didn't even touch the tee boxes for a year and a half, and he was involved with me just as much as Brad (Dalke) or Max (McGreevy) or Hirsch (Grant Hirschman). That's just the kind of guy he is. He can see something out of nothing."
And that competitive spirit reigns in Hybl.
"Every single day," McAllister said, "whatever we're doing for practice, it's super competitive, whether it's a chipping contest, or putting contest, it's always competition driven."
Golf is a parity-dominated sport. The difference between winning and losing in some sports is vast. The difference in golf is a sliver. A bounce here, a gust of wind there, is the difference between winning a match or even making a cut.
Yet the Sooners for five straight NCAAs have advanced out of qualifying to make the coveted eight-team match-play portion of the tournament.
Hybl says he takes pride in the Sooners' grit.
"Our game is so difficult," Hybl said. "The guys that truly can dig out a shot, save a shot when nobody else can, by their will power, is something special and what we promote with all our guys."
The Sooners now play with an attitude. An attitude and a confidence.
"He lets us know that we have a chip on our shoulder," McAllister said. "You know, we've been No. 1 for pretty much this entire season, the last two seasons, and every tournament we go to we feel underappreciated.
"He does a good job of lighting that fire and keeping us hungry. Some good teams don't have that. I still feel like OU golf doesn't necessarily get put in the same sentence with some other teams."
That seems unlikely. The Sooners over five seasons have been the nation's most consistent team.
Granted, OSU's history is unassailable. The Cowboys have 11 NCAA titles, star after star on the PGA Tour, and Karsten Creek, the jewel of college golf courses.
"Saying you're out of OSU's shadow, that's pretty tough," Cummings said. "I would love to see people think of OU and OSU on the same plane.
"I mean, you would have been crazy to say that 3-4 years ago. But that just shows how confident we are as a program. It's so special being part of something like that."
Hybl 13 years ago walked into a meeting room that was special. It’s special still, and he’s one of the reasons why.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OU men's golf: Ryan Hybl has taken Sooners to the NCAA pinnacle
