Thomas Trueblood - Golf Coach

Golf Coach

Trueblood was the faculty tennis champion, but at age 40 his doctor told him to give up the game because it was too strenuous. He took up golf, and enjoyed success in that sport, too. "I took it up in August and in October I won the Ann Arbor Golf Club championship," he said. In 1901, Trueblood organized the first Michigan golf team. On October 24–25, 1902, Michigan defeated the University of Chicago 16-12 in "the first intercollegiate golf match held in the West."

In 1921, golf became a varsity sport, and Trueblood was the school's first official coach. In 1926, Trueblood retired as a professor emeritus at age 70. At that time, he turned his attention full-time to coaching. His coaching record at Michigan was 71-9-2. During his 15 official seasons as golf coach, his teams won two NCAA National Championships (1934-1935) and five Big Ten Conference championships (1932-1936), and were Big Ten runners-up eight times. He coached two NCAA individual champions, John Fischer (1932) and Chuck Kocsis (1936). Trueblood continued as golf coach until he was 80, when athletic director Fielding H. Yost named him emeritus coach.

In 1932, Chuck Kocsis (the first golfer inducted into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor), enrolled at the university. When a promised alumni pledge to pay his expenses fell through, Trueblood agreed to make a loan (at five percent interest) so Kocsis could pay his tuition. The Wolverines with Kocsis won the NCAA championship twice. Kocsis recalled that the team often traveled to tournaments in Trueblood's car. "Professor Trueblood had a seven-passenger Buick," Kocsis said. "He designated me as the chauffeur. So if we had a golf match, we'd all get into the car and go to Chicago, or go to Ohio, wherever we were going to play." Another teammate recalled the trips in Trueblood's car: "It wasn't a very big Buick, as I recall. We rode with six guys. Chuck used to do most of the driving. I remember that trip down to Washington (for the 1935 national championship at Congressional, which Michigan won). We started in the morning and drove all the way down there. Professor Trueblood was a big guy, too." Trueblood took the team on a side trip to Mount Vernon, where one of the players accidentally bumped the shifter into gear and hit the accelerator as he exited Trueblood's car. The car lurched forward; the open door hit something and was torn off its hinges.

Ralph M. Cole, a member of the golf team of 1926-1928, later wrote of a humorous incident involving the septuagenarian Coach Trueblood. Cole recalled: “As golf coach he could add very little about the mechanics of the game. But he added one piece of advice which was very helpful when followed, and which he drilled into us at every practice session. It was: ‘Up and out in two, boys.’ As any golfer would know, it meant, when hitting a short approach shot, get it close enough to the pin to make the next putt. Now for the humorous part of that admonition. We had played Purdue in Lafayette on a Thursday and were to play Illinois on Friday. The Professor was to call us at 4:30 a.m. to catch a 5:30 train for Urbana. Well, he got confused on our room number and awakened a man who called the front desk and told the night clerk that there must be some nut calling at 4:30 a.m. and shouting, ‘Up and out in two boys!’ We did make the train, anyway.”

A.H. Jolly, Jr., captain of the 1933 golf team, noted: “Truby, as he was referred to when out of earshot, was still a most active and attentive coach. But the only club or clubs I recall seeing him handle in those days, was a Left-Handed Putter!”