Coach Sue Nyhus continues her successful golf career with the Wolverines.
Garrett Hadley | Sports writer | @hadleyjazzboy
Photos courtesy of UVU Athletics
Two-time Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year Sue Nyhus is entering her fourth season with the Wolverines at UVU. Nyhus boasts a very impressive resume on and off the golf course as she leads the Utah Valley University Women’s golf team into the 2015-16 season.
A graduate of BYU, Nyhus spent over a decade with the Cougars and helped lead them to some of their most successful finishes in school history.
“As a player at BYU, I was surrounded by a lot of very good players,” Nyhus said. “As I told the [UVU] team this year, when the tide rises all the ships rise with it and because my team was strong, I became a better player.”
She helped coach multiple academic All-Scholars and All-Americans, as well as Carrie Summerhays Roberts, who went on to compete on the LPGA Tour. She also coached the Cougars to NCAA Regionals and Championships.
“When I took over at BYU, they had been down a few years,” Nyhus said. “I was fortunate enough to bring a few key people and get things to move well and move that team into the top-20 for several years and made it to nationals for the first time in 20 years. We were doing some really great things. Again, learning life lessons through golf and that was the key piece.”
After leading the women’s golf team at BYU to a No. 14 national finish during the 1980s, Nyhus eventually found herself competing on the Women’s Professional Golf European Tour. She has represented Utah in multiple tournaments and been awarded as the Utah Women’s Golf Association Golfer of the Year in 1996 and 1998. The Utah Golf Association Player of the Year was given to her in 1999, as she was the first woman awarded with that honor. The UGA has also named her the Female Golfer of the decade.
“That was a very special award,” Nyhus said. “Prior to that time, women weren’t considered for that particular award. It was one of the best summers (’99) that I have ever had. It was their [Utah Golf Association] really their first opportunity to consider a woman and I am totally, completely honored and flattered and humbled that they selected me.”
Nyhus became the head coach of the UVU Wolverines women’s golf team in 2012 and it was an opportunity she was not going to pass up.
“When the opportunity came for me to move to Utah Valley University, it was just a tremendous opportunity,” Nyhus said. “So grateful for it and really glad to be a Wolverine. It’s a lively, growing, healthy working environment and I’m proud to be a Wolverine and grateful to have the opportunity that I do.”
In July, Nyhus also accomplished something that no other player in the United States Golf Association can lay claim to. She became the only person to compete in every United States Golf Association event offered to her when she took part in a qualifying round at the 2015 Utah Golf Association Ladies State Amateur tournament at Fox Hollow Golf Course.
“I’m in a very unique position,” Nyhus said. “I am the only female–or male, for that matter– that has competed in every USGA event hosted for my gender and no one can catch me because the Public Links is no longer being held. There are no words for it…and I am honored to be there.”
Off the course, coach Nyhus can also be referred to as “Doctor Nyhus.” In 1992 she received her Ph.D. from the University of Utah in Sports Psychology after getting her BS and MS in health education from BYU.
For the past two seasons she had the task of being both a coach and a mother to her daughter Kimberly, who is a junior, is a member of the golf team. Nyhus wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It is an interesting two roles that I play,” Nyhus said. “She does a lot of great things for me and I couldn’t be more proud of her for giving her best effort every day on the golf course. It’s been such a great honor to be able to be where I could at least see what she is doing and watch how she’s grown.”
