It all started with a single phone call.
A call from a coach asking a former player to come back and join his staff as an assistant. The phone call was from University of Nevada, Las Vegas, coach Dwaine Knight to J.C. Deacon.
It was 2011, and Knight was looking for a new assistant coach. Deacon played for Knight from 2001 to 2005 and was an integral part of the last UNLV team to win a Mountain West Conference title in 2002.
At first, Deacon told Knight he didn’t think he was the right person for the job.
"You’re crazy, I’ve never thought about being a coach a day in my life, I’m the wrong guy," Deacon said to Knight. "When I really sat down and thought about the opportunity to work for him and to spend some more time with him and still be in the game, it was an easy decision."
But what Deacon didn’t know at the time was that one phone call would end up changing his life forever.
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Before accepting the job under Knight at UNLV, Deacon, 32, was traveling on the Canadian Tour in which he played in 35 tournaments while making 17 cuts.
Things weren’t always easy for Deacon while playing on the Canadian Tour. It was a constant grind for him and the other players he traveled with.
"We’d have to take 500 bucks and make it work for two weeks," Deacon said. "You’re staying in bad hotels and getting the best rental cars you can and finding deals everywhere and free meals."
While making 17 cuts on the Canadian Tour was a great accomplishment for him, the biggest thing Deacon learned from playing on the Tour was the day-by-day process of improving and not worrying about your results. He took that philosophy into his coaching.
"If you get caught up in every result you have and every score you shoot, you’re going to drive yourself nuts," Deacon said. "But if you just get caught up in the process of getting better and learning more about your game and trying to do something a little bit better every day, then it can become more of an overall process that you’re trying to improve."
In those four seasons as an assistant at UNLV, Deacon had to do everything while on staff. From fundraising to running the home tournament to recruiting, Knight made sure Deacon learned the ropes.
"I feel like I got to mature at twice the time of anyone else because I was doing so much and he asked so much of me," Deacon said. "And it just became natural after a while and it was such an awesome time."
The workload as an assistant under Knight would set Deacon up for what would become the biggest coaching endeavor in his life.
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Buddy Alexander was finishing up his 27th season as the head coach of the Florida men’s golf team when he decided to retire. In 27 years, Alexander guided the Gators to two national titles and eight Southeastern Conference titles.
But his retirement in April opened the door for someone else to take the helm of the program.
That person was Deacon.
Deacon’s application process was different than other applicants because he reached out to UF before it reached out to him.
Yet again, Deacon didn’t think he had a chance at the job. It wasn’t until after following the advice of some of the people he respects in the golf industry that he threw his name into the pot of potential candidates.
Deacon was given an interview and he knew immediately that Florida was the perfect fit for him.
"When I came here I knew that Florida was going to be the right place for me," Deacon said. "When I left here all I could think about for those two weeks when I had to wait was, you know I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t get the job because that’s all I wanted."
Those two weeks were awful for Deacon since everything was out of his control and he wondered if he had done enough in his interview.
Then a phone call came from Senior Associate Athletics Director Mary Howard asking Deacon to delete some of his tweets on Twitter to help clean up his social media presence. It was Deacon’s first sign that something serious was about to happen.
The next morning, Athletics Director Jeremy Foley called Deacon and offered him the job.
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With the job in hand, Deacon spent 40 of his first 45 days on the job on the road building his base with recruits and their families.
"As soon as I got the job, the bill that I racked up traveling in the summer was nuts," Deacon said. "We just went to work and I had to meet so many people and get ourselves established and the only way to do that was hard work."
Along with working hard on the recruiting trail, the first-year head coach worked on changing the mentality surrounding the program.
Deacon wasn’t satisfied with the team’s performance after the first round of the season, so he put an emphasis on changing the way the players felt about the program and making sure they gave it their all.
Deacon’s changes have made a positive impact on the team Florida squad as it had two second place finishes in the fall.
"We’ve had to change some behavior, I’m just trying to put my stamp on the team and let these guys know what’s important to me," Deacon said. "We made some big strides this semester."
When he first took the job, Deacon said there were "championships to be won here."
Even though he’s tempered those expectations since then, Deacon feels with the strides he’s made as a coach since he took over the program in June, the future looks bright for the program.
"I can’t imagine how much better I’ve gotten as a coach in the last six months, I’m just so excited to be here for the next, hopefully 30 years," Deacon said. "If I can improve as much as a coach as I have this year, every single year, I think we’ll have some pretty good teams that’ll hopefully compete for some championships."
Follow Luis Torres on Twitter @LFTorresIII
UF men's golf coach J.C. Deacon speaks during a press conference in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
Led by first-year head coach JC Deacon, the Florida men's golf team returned to the NCAA Championship last season. Here's Ryan Summer's story on the occasion (http://www.alligator.org/sports/golf/article_982fe4ae-fdf2-11e4-833b-83c78d3e0d3f.html)
