“This award is just a grain of sand on an entire beach of accomplishment,” said men’s golf coach Jack Jensen after Guilford’s Dave Patterson was named ODAC golfer of the week March 31.
Patterson, a junior sports management major from Fort Pierce, Florida, is ranked first on the team this season.
He is a 2003 recipient of the Nereus C. English ‘26 Athletic Leadership Award, which honors top students athletes at Guilford, and he placed second at the 2002 NCAA Division III men’s golf championship, where the Quakers won their second national golf title. He is currently ranked 111th out of all college and university golfers nationwide.
To teammate Spencer Witherspoon, however, Patterson is just one of the guys.
“He can shoot 63 and still be just Dave,” Witherspoon said. “Being humble helps him to be a better player.”
Nevertheless, being humble does not keep Patterson from displaying a fierce competitive spirit.
“Dave is a very competitive young man, and he does not like to lose,” Jensen said. “He has a tremendous work ethic when it comes to golf. He works on his weaknesses rather than his strengths, and that is what sets him apart from some other athletes. He keeps on working to help himself improve his weaknesses even though he probably has days when he has very little success.”
As a child, Patterson couldn’t have imagined that he would become so dedicated to golf.
“I have been playing for about nine years. Before that, I played baseball for a long time,” Patterson said.
“My dad would play golf on the weekends, and I wanted to take it up to be with him rather than stuck in the house. I immediately just liked it more [than baseball], and within a week I was hitting the ball pretty good.
“I enjoy it because you have to constantly strive to improve; you can always be better. Golf is really challenging.”
So challenging, in fact, that the team sometimes gets frustrated.
“We joke about how we probably lead the nation in ‘clubs broken,’” Patterson said. “When we get frustrated is when it starts happening. It is so frustrating when we go out to play in the winter and the course is all wet. It’s sad, but I have probably broken more clubs than the rest of the team has.”
Broken clubs or not, Patterson remains the epitome of focus and determination.
“I was playing with Dave one day, and when he swung the face went farther than the ball,” Witherspoon said. “But he finished the hole. Actually, he finished it well.”