Gerrod Chadwell
How the game of golf found the Aggie head coach
By Charean Williams '86
Gerrod Chadwell loves his wife, professional golfer Stacy Lewis. He loves that golf helped pay his way through college. He loves his job as head women's golf coach at Texas A&M. He loves his team.
But how the game of golf found Chadwell? That is a unique journey.
“There are a lot of things I like about golf,” Chadwell said. “I have always been a team guy, so I love baseball. I love football. I love basketball. I love being able to pass it to somebody. I love being able to take a shot. It is interesting how golf found me. I did not choose it. It chose me, and here I am. I do not doubt it or second guess it. It is one of those things that is weird. I cannot explain it.”
Golf has been very good to Chadwell, and Chadwell has been very good at being a golf coach. He has become one of the top coaches in the country in his two seasons in Aggieland, leading the A&M Women's Golf team to the semifinals of the NCAA Championships in back-to-back years.
“I knew he had the potential to do this for a program, but I never thought he would do it this quickly,” said Hailee Cooper, an Aggie golf student-athlete who transferred to A&M from the University of Texas for her final two seasons. “I was his first recruit to A&M.”
Chadwell told Cooper that he wanted her to help lay the foundation for the Aggie Women's Golf program.
“He told me, 'We are going to build something here for the future, and I want you to help build that,'” she said. “It is really cool it ended up being my class to get to play on that stage for the first time in school history. None of us thought when we signed here that we would be in a contention for a national championship two years in a row. There was no way we ever would have thought that.”
"It is interesting how golf found me. I did not choose it. It chose me, and here I am. I do not doubt it or second guess it. It is one of those things that is weird. I cannot explain it."
Chadwell never dreamed his career would end up here.
His father, Jerry Chadwell, coached high school baseball and was an assistant high school football coach in Oklahoma, but he passed away when Gerrod was 8. His mother, Jane, later remarried, and Carlyle Meyerhoeffer introduced Chadwell to golf.
When he was 14, Meyerhoeffer and his grandfather, L.D. Thomas, took Chadwell to play a nine-hole course in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He shot 127.
“It is a memory I will forever have,” Chadwell said.
He was a star athlete at El Reno High School, and that included leading the golf team to a state runner-up finish as a senior despite having never taken formal lessons. East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, offered Chadwell a golf scholarship that paid 50 percent of his tuition and full room and board.
So, he became a college golfer.
Chadwell's first tee shot in college was memorable. It traveled all of 15 yards into a creek shortly after his coach, Chris Grace, tried to ease Chadwell's nerves by jokingly telling him, “Hey, do not put this one in the creek in front of you.”
“He ended up playing pretty well in that tournament,” Grace recalled, chuckling at the memory, “and he turned out to be a very good player. He stepped right in and became the glue as a freshman. Everyone took to him.”
Grace believes that Chadwell's experience on the basketball court in high school played a significant role in his success on the golf course.
“They made the state semifinals twice and the state final once,” Grace said. “It helped him develop grit and toughness.”
Chadwell earned All-American honors in 2001, and that could have been the end of his relationship with golf. He earned a bachelor's degree in exercise science in 2002 and a master's degree in sports administration in 2003. When he walked across the stage at East Central University, Chadwell had no idea what his future held.
He had served as an assistant coach on the Redlands Community College Women's Golf team in 2002-03, with the Cougars finishing third nationally. Then, it was on to Dave Pelz Golf in South Florida, where, as a short-game instructor, Chadwell worked with all levels of golfers, including tour professionals.
“Shortly after getting there, I realized South Florida was not going to be my forever place,” Chadwell said. “After two years there, I just had this urge to get into coaching like my father. Golf was going to be the natural fit because that was my recent experience, but I really had no idea where or what.”
Redlands Community College, which is in his hometown of El Reno, Oklahoma, called Chadwell to offer him a job coaching the women's golf program. Chadwell did not want to coach women, and he did not want to move back to his hometown — he wanted to coach at a “big” school.
“It was a three-strike job,” Chadwell said, “but it was like I was thrust into it. I think that speaks to my faith and belief of, 'Ok, this is where I am being led to go.'”
The previous coach had taken his top five players with him to Tulsa, but Chadwell recruited a new team and won the NJCAA National Championship in his first season in 2008. Redlands repeated in 2009 before finishing third in 2010. Chadwell won NJCAA National Coach of the Year honors in his first two seasons as a head coach.
It was the first of a career of quick turnarounds and coach of the year honors, and it set his career path. After three seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Oklahoma, Chadwell was hired by the University of Houston in May 2013 as the first coach in program history. The Cougars won three American Athletic Conference Championships, and Chadwell was voted the conference's coach of the year three times in his seven seasons.
“Being a male coach in a female sport, it is not easy to get these big-time jobs,” said Lewis, a two-time LPGA Player of the Year and a two-time LPGA major champion. “So, he kind of went through some frustrations to get where he is now. It is really cool to see all that hard work he has put in finally paying off.”
The Aggies hired Chadwell on June 8, 2021, though he was not convinced A&M had real interest until the offer came. He calls it his “Yankees' job,” a desired destination he plans on never leaving.
“During the search, coach Chadwell's name kept coming up,” Director of Athletics Ross Bjork said. “His passion for teaching young women the game of golf, his focus on academics and preparing his players for life made him the clear choice as the search concluded. The only question in our mind was whether his wife, Stacy, could wear maroon instead of red since she played golf at Arkansas.”
In Chadwell's first season, A&M went to the semifinals of the NCAA Championships after finishing stroke play as the No. 3 seed and defeating Florida State in the quarterfinals.
The Aggies won the SEC title in 2023 with a 3-2 win over No. 5 Mississippi State. A&M rallied in the NCAA Championships to qualify for match play and defeated No. 11 Texas 3-1 before seeing their season end to No. 2 Wake Forest, which won the national title.
“No one had any clue that he would turn things around this quickly,” Bjork said. “We did feel that if he could turn around the culture and morale of the program, that we could be competitive and steadily build the program over time. To be in back-to-back final fours of match play and be SEC Champions after only two years is a miraculous turnaround that no one could have predicted.”
The Aggies are ahead of schedule and right on time. The only thing missing now is a national championship.
“The stars aligned, and magic happened,” Chadwell said of the quick turnaround. “I think it is great to see that it is doable here, and I think that is going to be attractive for future student-athletes.”
The reluctant golfer turned reluctant golf coach is now a reluctant golf father, with 5-year-old Chesnee Lynn already swinging a club. Golf is his life, love it or not.
“I think God has a sense of humor,” Chadwell said, “because no way in a million years would I have thought I would be coaching women's golf, married to a professional golfer and then have a daughter. It is just so funny that here I am, but here I am.”