PGA Master Professional Conrad Rehling, who followed a successful collegiate coaching career at Florida and Alabama by transforming his retirement into inspiring PGA Professionals to give back to the physically challenged, died April 3, of congestive heart failure.
Rehling, who was 87, passed away in Hiawassee, Ga., where he and his wife of 62 years, Maxine, were living.
“The PGA of America and the game of golf are that much richer for having benefited from the lifetime service of Conrad Rehling,” says PGA of America President Brian Whitcomb. “As a teacher, a coach and an inspiration to the physically challenged, Mr. Rehling had few peers. His legacy lives on within the hearts of all who appreciate the value of the game of golf and how it opens so many doors. We will greatly miss him, yet his work will never be forgotten.”
Born in Peru, Ind., Feb. 6, 1920, Rehling attended Taylor University in Upland, Ind., where he competed in basketball and graduated in 1943, a year after his future wife, Maxine.
Rehling’s professional coaching career began at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla., where from 1949-69, he was professor of physical education, golf chairman, and, from 1956-63, the head coach of the Florida Gators. His golf team went 66-26-1, and among the future Tour professionals he guided was Bob Murphy.
“He taught me everything I know,” Murphy, an NCAA and U.S. Amateur champion, said of Rehling in 1968, when Murphy was a PGA Tour rookie who’d just won the Philadelphia Golf Classic. “He saw I had fire and guts and desire and he taught me how to use them.”
Rehling coached Florida to the 1956 Southeastern Conference Championship. His 1960 Gators team finished fourth at the NCAA Championships.
Rehling was elected to PGA membership in 1965, and quickly became one of its most popular instructors and contributors to the Dixie PGA Section.
His collegiate coaching career included a stop at the University of West Florida. During that time, a young golfer from a rival school (Columbus College) met Rehling.
That student, Brent Krause, would go on to be a PGA District 3 Director and is today a PGA Master Professional and the general manager and director of golf at Wynlakes Golf & Country Club in Montgomery, Ala.
“Coach was ahead of his time with his ability to give back to the game through the National Golf Foundation and what is known today at Play Golf America,” says Krause. “He not only guided the path of so many Tour professionals such as Steve Lowery and Jerry Pate, but he also developed new passions as he got older. He was a pioneer in teaching the physically challenged populations.
“He was a man of keen wit and he also knew where the rubber hits the road. He could laugh at himself and was so full of witticisms that you could not keep up with him.”
One of Rehling’s motivational “barbs” was often repeated by a number of his players: “You guys talk 68, shoot 78 and drive home in the state car at 88.”
To help Pate gain his focus in competition, Rehling gave Pate a piece of paper inscribed with four elements of advice: 1) Don’t Panic; (2) Don’t let your Nanny get your Goat; 3) Tempo; and (4) Patience.
“He told me to put it in my pocket and pull it out on the golf course when I felt like I was not feeling comfortable with my round,” says Pate. “The second point, ‘Don’t let your nanny get your goat,’ I’d never heard that said before. B ut it was his way of saying don’t get angry because if you get angry, you can’t play.’ I used to pull that piece of paper out often.”
Pate says that he didn’t have that piece of paper when he won the 1976 U.S. Open at Atlanta Athletic Club. “By then, I had memorized those four points,” he recalls.
In 1972, Rehling was named golf coach at the University of Alabama. He also established and coached Alabama’s first women’s golf team. He coached the Tide men until his retirement in 1988. Rehling coached Alabama to its only SEC title in 1979. Alabama advanced to five NCAA Championships (1973, ‘74, ‘75, ‘81 and ‘83) and enjoyed its best school finish in 1975 with a tie for third.
During that time, Rehling coached future Tour professionals Steve Lowery, Tom Garner, Lee Rinker and Pate. Pate won both the 1974 U.S. Amateur and the World Amateur while he was a Crimson Tide golfer and made his first Tour victory the 1976 U.S. Open.
Pate says Rehling was like a father to the player away from. home. “He had a remarkable ability to mold kids, to make winners out of them,” adds Pate. “It was more than helping them win golf championships. He really turned my life around. I had bumps along the way when I was in my middle 30s and he guided me through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Golf Ministry to lead a better path. He never pushed or tried to hard-sell it.”
Rinker, now the PGA director of golf at Emerald Dunes Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., says he never forgot a film that captured Rehling helping a young Alabama high school kid play golf.
“The kid was on crutches and had deformed hands that you wouldn’t think could allow him to hold a golf club,” says Rinker. “Well, the young boy’s dad had heard of Conrad and got his son to meet Coach. After awhile, this kid had figured out a way to groove it and he was shooting in the 80s.
“The sad thing is at that time Alabama high school rules declared that you had to carry your own golf bag to compete on a high school team. There’s no telling what that story would turn out today under new rules about competition. Conrad was a fine man and the reason why I went to Alabama.”
In 1992, Rehling won The PGA of America’s Horton Smith Award for outstanding and continuing contributions to professional education. He was the SEC Coach of the Year in 1979 and 1983. In 1980, he was among the first class of inductees in the Golf Coaches Association of America Hall of Fame.
In 1999, he was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. And in 2005 the PGA of America honored Rehling again by giving him the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to Special Olympics in the sport of golf and establishing an award in his name, the Conrad Rehling Award.
The 1992 PGA Horton Smith Award winner and the retired golf coach of the University of Alabama, Rehling helped found the Special Olympics golf program. He also co-wrote, with PGA Professional Rick Burton, the 165-page “Special Olympics Golf Coaching Guide” that is distributed to all Special Olympics Programs.
Rehling was one of the founding fathers of the Special Olympics golf program. In his retirement, Rehling dedicated his time in coaching physically challenged golfers and authored books on the topic.
Among Rehling’s many contributions, he also developed, organized and conducted the initial PGA Professional Special Olympics training sessions that were held around the country. As a past member of the Special Olympics Golf National Committee, Rehling organized the Level I golf competition at the 1995 and 1999 Special Olympics World Games.
Dick Spybey was hired as Rehling’s assistant at Alabama and was named head coach, on Rehling’s recommendation, when Rehling retired in 1988.
“It was just a great working relationship from the get-go. Conrad taught me so much about life in general,” says Spybey. “I remember he always said, ‘You’ve got to remember that you’ve got to give back to the game.’ That’s why I always felt an obligation to work in the Golf Coaches Association, because of his advice. I owe an awful lot to Conrad.”
Spybey, who coached Alabama to seven NCAA appearances before making a career change to teach and coach at Tuscaloosa’s American Christian Academy, says Rehling has remained a favorite with his former Alabama golfers.
“There’s no question about that. He’s a Hall of Famer. And all Hall of Fame members are a step above, so to speak, in what they do,” Spybey says.
Rehling is survived by his wife, Maxine, three daughters; and is a grandfather and great-grandfather.
