In this edition of Cougar Pawprints, we sat down with a coach who has been leaving his mark at CSUSM Athletics since coming onboard eight years ago. Greg Hutton has been at the helm of the men's golf program since the 2010-11 season and was named the women's golf head coach in the summer of 2014. A leader, who guided his 2017-18 women's golf program to the department's first and only California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) title, shares more on just how he got to be a Cougar.
 
Golf hasn't always been it for Greg. Growing up in Santa Cruz, surfing was his main hobby. It wasn't until around the age of six that his father built him his first golf club, and Greg was instantly hooked.
 
"Once I proved to my dad that I was serious about playing, I got my first set of clubs and he began to take me out on the course with his friends," Greg said. "Soon after, I began playing in junior tournaments at a local par 3 course and continued to play throughout high school."
 
After high school graduation, Greg moved briefly to Tahoe to pursue snowboarding, but there was just something about golf that kept him intrigued. There was no doubt that golf was bound to be a part of his life in some form. Shortly after moving to Tahoe, golf came knocking at the collegiate level, and the rest is history.  
 
"I have always loved the competitive nature of golf being an individual sport," Greg shared. "This is probably where my inspiration to pursue the sport again came from. It led me back to Santa Cruz where I played locally at a junior college before finishing my final two years at UC Davis."
 
So how did Greg make it down to Cal State San Marcos? After, a five-year stint as the head coach at Holy Names University, he and his wife decided to relocate to Escondido, and it just so happened that there was an opening at CSUSM Athletics.
 
"I was convinced it was meant to be," Greg said. "Especially since we had already decided to move to Southern California."
 
When Greg started at CSUSM, the department was a part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and in 2017-18, the department became a full-fledged member of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Division II. During the NAIA years, Greg's CSUSM squads won 13 tournament championships, and his players earned seven NAIA All-America selections. He's been named West Region Coach of the Year by the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA) twice (2013, 2015), and 13 men's players have been named GCAA All-West Region.
 
In CSUSM's first year in NCAA DII, Greg was named the CCAA Coach of the Year. The Cougar men's and women's golf teams each qualified for the NCAA Regional Championships. The women's team made history by winning the department's first-ever CCAA Conference championship and reaching a No. 7 national ranking and No. 2 west regional ranking.
 
Entering his ninth season at CSUSM, Greg explains that his growing success over the years simply means higher expectations.
 
"It's all about recruiting at this point," Greg explained. "Our teams are good and keep getting better meaning we can't fall behind on anything. We have to bring in players that are going to make the teams better than they were the year before. We are at the point now that when we play tournaments, we don't want to just win, we want to win by a lot."
 
With that, Greg details how the approach to both of his teams is quite different. In fact, when coaching the technical side of the sport, his method is based on the needs of the individual student-athlete. When it comes to course preparation for tournaments, each team focuses on their own strengths: the men play a power game and the women play a more strategic game.
 
As the competitive golf season nears, what does Greg hope to achieve? His response was pretty simple.
 
"We have three goals: win conference (CCAA), win regionals and compete to win a national championship."
 
Best of luck, Coach Greg. Keep making history here at CSUSM…Go Cougars!