Big South Feature: John Crooks Reflects on 30 Years Leading the Camels
By Brian Mull
Big South Correspondent
For more than three decades, John Crooks has been a familiar figure on the fairways at college golf tournaments, wearing his wide-brimmed straw hat and the orange and white of Campbell University, dispensing advice that propelled his players to become regulars at trophy presentations.
He’s coached the Camels’ men and women to a combined 148 tournament victories. Their success and Crooks’ reputation for player development have turned the charming town of Buies Creek, N.C. (population 2,492) into a destination for golfers from around the globe.
“The approach I’ve felt comfortable taking is that I have something to offer, maybe I can help ‘em get better,” Crooks said recently after a round of golf at Keith Hills, the Camels’ home course located on the Campbell campus.
Approaching his 31st year leading the men and 30th leading the women, the numbers are staggering.
On the women’s side, Crooks is third all-time in Division I with 88 tournament victories, trailing Duke coach Dan Brooks and just four victories shy of second. The Campbell men’s team has claimed 60 tournament titles during his tenure.
Between the two programs, Crooks has produced 23 conference team championships, 22 conference players of the year, 177 All-Conference team members and 288 All-Academic team honorees. His teams have appeared in 31 NCAA Regionals and five NCAA Championships.
Since rejoining the Big South for the 2011-12 season, the Campbell women have dominated the golf trophy, earning the championship in six of eight years, including the last four before the 2020 competition was canceled due to COVID-19.
“I’ve just been really fortunate with the people who have been here,” Crooks said. “They wanted to do as good of a job as I wanted to do.”
Crooks arrived in Buies Creek in the late 1980s, accompanying his wife, Susan, who was attending the Campbell Law School. A former U.S. Junior champion who played for the legendary Dave Williams at the University of Houston, Crooks was still competing in major state and national amateur tournaments at the time. He struck up a friendship with then-Campbell athletic director Wendell Carr shortly after moving to Buies Creek and served as a volunteer assistant for the men’s golf team in 1988 and 1989.
Carr named Crooks the men’s head coach on May 1, 1990.
Crooks quickly began molding the team and holding the golfers to a higher standard, expecting them to work to improve their individual skill set. Because he was still playing and competing at such a high level, Crooks admits he was too tough on the men in those early years.
“I’d just tell ‘em, ‘if you can’t beat me you can’t do this.’ If I could go back, I didn’t treat them nearly as well. It’s not that I hurt them or was abusive, my approach … came from a different place,” he said. “I told a couple of ‘em they probably shouldn’t play golf, they were a waste of my time and talent [adding,] ‘You might have been good once upon a time but now you’re just interested in drinking beer.’”
The following year, Campbell started it’s women’s program. Shortly thereafter, Crooks received a letter from Jennifer Layman, a Canadian, in which she mentioned she’d recently been named the Most Improved Golfer at her club after trimming her handicap from 36 to 18, or a roughly 90 stroke average. Before she arrived, each member of the Camels’ women roster averaged 100 or higher. Crooks told Layman he had a spot for her at Campbell and two days later she and her father made the drive south to Buies Creek.
Layman had an 89.35 stroke average as a freshman. She won the Big South championship as a junior in 1994, recorded a 79.82 stroke average as a senior and years later be voted to the Big South’s 1990-99 Women’s Golf All-Decade team.
“We all have those moments when we want to know if we’re any good at what we do,” Crooks said. “That was one that gave me confidence.”
Handling the men’s and women’s programs simultaneously requires excellent time management and a strong staff. Crooks has been doing it for so long, he understands the balance and commitment demanded. Through the years, he’s also refined his approach to elicit excellence from each team, learning plenty from his players along the way.
“Maybe coaching the women made me a better coach for the men and maybe coaching the men made me a better coach for the women,” he said.
Though careful not to make a blanket statement, the years of experience and interaction allow Crooks to make astute observations about the differences in coaching each gender.
“I constantly have to remind the women how good they are and how talented they are because they want to do it right every time, all the time and that’s not the way this game works,” Crooks said. “The men, well, they all have Superman on their chest and all think they’re better. And no matter how good the men are, there’s somebody out there at some club or some school who is working harder than they are and no matter how good they think they are, there’s something they have to polish.”
Matt Moot has been Crooks’ assistant since 2017. He was one of the unheralded players with room to improve when he arrived at Campbell as a freshman in 2007. He paired two sub-70 rounds with a 78 in an early qualifying weekend and held a slim lead over Crooks, who regularly competed alongside -- and beat -- his players. Moot felt good about his early performance and after Crooks complimented his fine play, said he made an offhand comment about “just trying to keep up with you coach.”
“I never shoot 78,” Crooks replied.
Moot went on to become a captain for the Camels, setting an example for the other players and he’s merely one branch on a sprawling tree of Crooks’ former players who are now program leaders, golf professionals or working in some capacity in the golf industry.
The women’s coaches at UAB, Marshall, Memphis, East Carolina, Samford and Oakland are former Crooks’ assistants. Duane Bock, who played at Campbell and served as a volunteer assistant, caddies for Kevin Kisner on the PGA Tour, helping the former Georgia star earn more than $19 million in the last six years.
The accomplishments speak for themselves but are even stronger when considering Campbell was prohibited from competing on Sundays until it rejoined the Big South in the fall of 2011. Crooks lost many prospective recruits due to the restriction, as most premier college tournaments are held on the weekend. PGA Tour member Brendon De Jonge chose Virginia Tech over Campbell for that reason alone.
Crooks was never afraid to aim high in recruiting.
“I was never in awe of a prospect or a player or his parents,” Crooks said. “I gave Tiger [Woods] a chance to come to Campbell. Every prospect who won a U.S. Junior I sent ‘em a thank you note and Go Camels. I’m sure they threw it in a trash can but I introduced myself. When you’re recruiting, some of these prospects’ parents are just in the stratosphere as far as being successful and some of them are famous. I appreciated them doing what they did but I felt like I could handle what I did and that confidence helped me.”
Once the Sunday restriction was lifted, Crooks began paying more attention to recruiting and the rosters have a strong international flavor. The explanation is simple. Crooks wants golfers who can best represent the university.
“While we’re always in the shadow of the ACC, everybody that follows Campbell wants to know how we’re competing against the ACC. If I want to do that, I can’t do it recruiting the 10th or 12th or 14th best player in North Carolina or South Carolina,” he said. “I have to go somewhere and find as good as I can find. So I had to look elsewhere. For about 24, 25 years the rosters were always about 50/50. Just recently it’s gone this other way and that’s just because I had enough history and experience to look and go back and say who are people I really enjoyed coaching.”
Sweden has become a fertile ground for both programs. Next year there will be eight Swedes on the men’s and women’s rosters. In an exact science, work ethic, skill set, academic ability and character top Crooks’ list.
“The more places I go and kids I see, the more opportunities that I’m out there, the more times I go fishing, the better chance I have of catching a fish,” he said. “If my gut tells me to jump, I jump.”
Now 70 years old, Crooks jokes that he’ll know when it’s time to retire because Moot will tell him he’s losing it. In reality, his responsibilities have helped him maintain normalcy through difficult times the last two years. Susan, his wife of 48 years, died of cancer in 2018.
“My wife traveled with me a little bit, it was so much fun, that was great,” Crooks said. “Then she got sick and when she got sick it became an issue about if she’s gone, then what do I do. To say that it’s a lifesaver for me now, that’s not an understatement.”