Retiring St. Joe’s golf coach Bob Lynch gets a memorable send-off after 35 years leading the program

One by one, Bob Lynch started seeing familiar faces. A former player here. A player’s parent there.

Lynch, who is retiring after 35 years leading the St. Joseph’s golf program, was standing with assistant coach Terry Scollin, a former Hawks golfer under Lynch. Scollin is taking over the program next year, but on April 16, Lynch and Scollin were at the 17th hole at LuLu Country Club, where Lynch’s final regular-season tournament, the Villanova Wildcat Invitational, was wrapping up.

There was another friendly face. Then someone told Lynch they had just run into his wife, Monica, and their five children.

“It kind of dawned on me that something was happening,” Lynch said.

When it was time to follow behind sophomore Matt Zerfass up the 18th fairway with the last group of the day, Lynch had company. A few dozen St. Joe’s golf alumni — some flew in from Illinois and Florida — joined Lynch for one of his final walks up an 18th fairway. Then they had a video tribute and a reception waiting for him after.

“That was pretty emotional,” said Lynch, a Father Judge and La Salle grad. “Tears were flowing. I am a baby when it comes to that stuff.”

“It was surreal,” said Scollin, who helped organize the whole thing.

Lynch, the longest-tenured coach on campus, is retiring from his part-time job for the last 35 years, leading a program he took over as a 32-year-old in 1988.

“The 32-year-old Bob Lynch did not expect the 68-year-old Bob Lynch to still be at it,” he said.

Memories, there are a lot of them, like a trip out west taking in the views at Torrey Pines in La Jolla, Calif. The Hawks came closest to winning an Atlantic 10 title under Lynch in 2003, when Lynch was the conference’s coach of the year. They led Xavier entering the final day but couldn’t close it out and missed out on their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance. But Billy Stewart became the first freshman in A-10 history to win the conference tournament individually. Lynch also coached Michael McDermott, one of Philadelphia’s most decorated amateurs. In 2019, he spent most of the day following senior Michael O’Brien around Kilmarlic Golf Club in Powells Point, N.C., where O’Brien shot a course-record 61 to capture the individual portion of the event. The Hawks finished fifth.

That’s the steady thing about golf, the game Lynch loves and hopes to actually play a little more in retirement. It is an individual game, and Lynch, like most college golf coaches, is not a swing guru. Players, Lynch said, have their own swing coaches and trainers.

“We’re just there for the stability, keep them pumped up, keep them positive,” Lynch said. “It’s very mental and it can go bad really quick. You do help with certain things. It’s not like I don’t know the game at all. But you drive the van, you give out the meal money, you make sure we’re looking good. … We get commented all the time about how our uniforms are pretty sharp compared to a lot of teams.”

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Those van trips will be missed. The long drives with the guys made missing his family a little easier. Lynch loved hearing their stories about the happenings around campus, in and out of the classroom.

“Leadership-wise I wouldn’t have chosen anybody else,” said senior golfer Ryan Gorman. “He’s more of a friend to you than a coach, which is rare. That’s been awesome for me and the guys.”

As Scollin knows well, Lynch — who has been a fixture running the shot clock and men’s and women’s basketball games at Hagan Arena — isn’t going anywhere. His full-time gig is with Spike’s Trophies, and while Lynch plans to spend more time with Monica in North Wildwood, and more time with his 16 grandchildren (a 17th is on the way), the golf course and the Hawks will come calling. Especially the yearly trip to the Outer Banks.

St. Joe’s still had one more tournament to play, this past weekend’s Atlantic 10 championships in Orlando, where the Hawks finished in last place in the 12-team tournament. It was one more trip as a college golf coach for Lynch. One last time to spend with his guys before he hands the reins over to Scollin.

But that walk up the 18th at LuLu?

“It summed it up,” Lynch said. “I’ve gotten pretty close with pretty much all my guys over the years. I’ve been to many of their weddings and have seen their kids grow up.

“That’s what I’m going to miss the most, the relationships. The 36-hole days, I’m not going to miss. They’re some long days. But I’ll miss the people for sure.”