The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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34 ■ THE WOLFPACKER Team. He eventually brought most of that team to Raleigh to play for the Wolfpack. Oftentimes, Sykes relied on the recom- mendation of friends and his deep roots in the game to find players. Sometimes they worked out and sometimes they didn't. Sykes offered Clark the chance to play at NC State sight unseen. When the 5-foot-7 Clark showed up from South Africa on a January day, with club-head covers on his irons, no less, Sykes wasn't sure what to expect. After 10 minutes of watching Clark hit balls at Wildwood Green Country Club, landing one on top of the other, the coach knew he would be okay. "He gave me a scholarship for five months," Clark explained, "and said if I played good, I could stay, and if I didn't, I'd be on the next boat back to South Africa." Sykes takes no credit for the success of his players — Clark and Pettersson alone have won nearly $50 million between them on the PGA Tour — except for giving them the opportunity to play. "Coaching those guys wasn't hard," Sykes said. "They had all the skills when they got here. I just had to make sure they showed up at the golf course on time." Others, of course, were more difficult. Sykes taught football coach Lou Holtz how to play golf. ("He was terrible," the coach noted. "He only used an iron to hit on every hole, and he wasn't very good with that. But he went from finishing last at the College Football Coaches Association golf tournament to winning it one year.") He helped Valvano improve ("At least I made an attempt," he said. "Jim was pretty athletic, but I could only do so much.") He gave tips that helped Kay Yow, former head football coach Monte Kiffin and other fel- low coaches have a better chance to make par. More than anything, though, he was a presence, an injection of humor into the high-stakes, heavy-pressure world of ath- letics, whether he was with other coaches or with his team. "The thing about Coach Sykes is that he is just a great motivator," said Kelly Mitchum, a four-time All-American and two-time ACC champion who now works as a PGA instructor for Pinehurst Resorts. "He didn't try to mess with your swing or over-coach you. "He just always had the right words to say, or the right joke to tell, to make you feel better about your game." Pettersson remembers a time in a college tournament in 1999 when he and teammate Chris Shankel were sitting 70 feet away from the hole on a three-tiered green. Remembering Richard Sykes "My family and I had just moved to the U.S. from England in 1994. My dad was relocated to Greensboro to work with Volvo Trucks. Absolutely no college coaches had any idea who I was or about my previous record before coming to the States. However, Coach Sykes recruited me from the beginning, while I was at Grimsley High School. "I wanted to attend NC State as a freshman, but needed to get my grades up a little. Coach recommended a great junior college for me to attend in Alabama. I went there and won the national junior college championship my freshman year. "It left me open to attend any college I wanted, and suddenly, I had the interest of a lot of schools. But the con - nection I had with Coach Sykes and all that he had done to show me he believed in me was what brought me back to NC State. I couldn't have made a better decision." — Carl Pettersson, two-time All-American, NCAA East Region champion and five-time winner on the PGA Tour with $22.5 million in career earnings "What a career. It's a remarkable accomplishment, and it has been fun for me to enjoy Richard's wit and his per- spective. He is history, and it's great to understand the tradition and history at places. I think that is so valuable. I really respect what he has done here and the respect he has for the game. "He is so good to make me chuckle or laugh, and to help. He keeps things in perspective. His love of NC State is inspiring." — Page Marsh, NC State women's golf coach and North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame member "Richard is the whole reason I came to NC State. Literally everything I have now I owe to Richard and the golf program at NC State. "I was already out of high school and not sure what I was going to do when I was first connected with Coach Sykes, through a friend of our family. I had thought about turning professional, but I was also waiting for the opportunity to play college golf in the United States. Coach Sykes gave me that opportunity to play here. "Without him and NC State giving me the opportunity to come here and play, I probably wouldn't have ever be - come a PGA Tour player. I certainly owe so much to Richard for giving me the chance to get started." — Tim Clark, three-time All-American at NC State and two-time winner on the PGA Tour with career earnings of almost $24 million "Words cannot describe Richard Sykes. Even with all the success other Canadian players had once they got here, Matt Hill and others, Coach Sykes is the reason I came here. He likes to make people laugh, he can definitely help your game and he is a great, great coach." — Albin Choi, All-American golfer from Vancouver, Canada "It was my freshman year at NC State, and Coach Sykes was still a heavy smoker at the time. That was hard for me because I was his roommate on the road. "Early in the year, he tells us that if we break par as a team, he will quit smoking cold turkey, never light up another cigarette. It was an easy thing for him to say because we had never come close to breaking par as a team. But that was our motivation "We were in Spartanburg, South Carolina, playing at the Wofford Invitational, and we were playing great. When our last player came up the 18th fairway, we knew we were going to finish under par. "I looked up on the green, and there was Coach Sykes puffing away on a cigarette with smoke billowing around him like a smokestack. I don't know if I have ever seen someone enjoy a last cigarette more. But he never smoked again as far as I know." — Kelly Mitchum, four-time NC State All-American and PGA teaching instructor for Pinehurst Resort Many of Sykes' former golfers — including Tim Clark and Carl Pettersson (left) — are still having success in the professional ranks. PHOTO BY TIM PEELER