UNLV golf thriving because of Dwaine Knight’s hustle

Longtime coach has built program into the Gonzaga basketball of college golf

Dwaine Knight’s first office at UNLV was a converted utility closet inside the Thomas & Mack Center. The door opened the wrong way and there was barely enough space for the golf coach to maneuver.

“It had a chair and table to put a phone on,” he recalls.

He’s moved a few times during his 30-year UNLV career, including two years ago to a new space inside the Lied Athletic Complex that is more spacious. The office is decorated from floor to ceiling with awards documenting the program’s rise, everything from the 1998 national championship trophy to a framed certificate for each All-american. There are so many of those certificates that they line the office walls.

From under some papers on his desk, Knight pulls out a notebook. It’s been with him every step of the way — from New Mexico, where he coached before coming to Las Vegas in 1988, to the corner office at the Thomas & Mack Center and now into a bigger office fitting of the school’s best all-time coach not named Jerry Tarkanian.

The notebook holds one of the keys to his coaching strategy: To play at UNLV, you have to earn it.

Before the Rebels leave for a tournament, the squad’s eight players have to qualify for their spot on the trip. Knight doesn’t care if you’re an All-american or a golfer who walked onto the team, everyone is on equal footing for the five travel positions. The notebook, with decades of results hand written by Knight, lists the scores of each golfer’s round. Three qualify for each trip in the system; Knight selects the final two.

He flips through the notebook to point out golfers from yesteryear and what they scored in qualifying. There are college national champions Warren Schutte (he beat Phil Mickelson) and Ryan Moore, PGA Tour great Adam