Angela Stanford is one of the most accomplished and decorated athletes in the history of TCU’s athletic department, and she comes from a place of concern for her alma mater.
When she saw that longtime men’s golf coach Bill Montigel’s contract will not be renewed after the 2022-23 season, she decided to say something.
“I would say that I am frustrated, and I have been for some time,” Stanford said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “And when I saw Bill was not being renewed, it made me think we are not committed to being better moving forward. If you want to get better than Bill Montigel, who are you going to get?”
Montigel, 68, has been the men’s golf coach at TCU for the last 35 years.
The decision not to retain Montigel for at least a few more years baffled significant members of the TCU athletics community, starting with Stanford.
Her concern is specifically about TCU’s golf program, men’s and women’s, but it could apply to other sports as well.
She attended TCU long before it joined the Big 12, and the Power 5.
Her concern is rooted in fear that it could be left behind. Most people associated with the university on any level simply do not want to see it return to second-tier status.
The Saginaw native and current Fort Worth resident was a four-time All-American who graduated from TCU, and has been on the LPGA Tour since 2001. She has won seven LPGA Tour events, including the U.S Women’s Open in 2018.
It is not like Angela Stanford, 44, is known to stand atop Fort Worth’s tallest building and complain. She is fiercely loyal, and protective, of her alma mater.
She is also quiet enough that when she does speak, you listen.
“I have a lot of friends who are golf coaches, or play on the Tour, and when we go to their schools and see their facilities it’s not even close,” she said. “If I’m a high school senior, and it’s coming down to TCU or Ole Miss, I’m going to Ole Miss. We (TCU) don’t have a facility.
“When you see what they have, that’s what (student-athletes) want. TCU doesn’t have that. TCU was good because of Bill and (women’s golf coach Angie Ravaioli-Larkin); TCU does not know how good they’ve had it because of those two. They know everybody and that’s how they were able to do it.”
Since joining the Big 12, both the men’s and women’s golf programs have ranked around the middle.
TCU does not have a home course, per se, where a player just shows up and practices.
What TCU has are relationships with the five major country clubs in the area: Colonial, Shady Oaks, River Crest, Ridglea and Mira Vista.
Telling a high school recruit they can play on courses like Colonial, or Shady Oaks, is a point of sale and an attraction. However, the mechanics of it are dated.
If a member of the TCU golf team wants to play a round, or practice, on their own time it usually requires Larkin or Montigel making a phone call.
Montigel has been with the athletic department since the early 1980s, and Larkin has been the women’s golf coach since 1994. They know everybody associated with these clubs to make all of this easy.
Larkin and Montigel fielded successful teams without needing all of the toys that the other programs added in the expensive facilities race of big-time college athletics.
“I never believed TCU needed its own course; the big five in have been so nice to TCU that it is an asset to play on all of these different courses,” Stanford said. “But what worked for me 25 years ago is not going to work on a recruit today.
“They go to these schools and they see courses, they see locker rooms, they see a place to practice their short game. All of it. They need something.”
TCU’s challenge, as it relates to this issue, is money. Ironic for a university with an endowment of $2.1 billion.
Investing in a non-revenue sport, especially one like golf, for an athletic department is typically a pain in the butt that the administration doesn’t want to do.
It normally falls on the coach to recruit a few influential boosters to throw around six, or seven, figures knowing there is no actual return.
The booster does it because they like the school, the coach, the sport, and the write-off.
TCU really doesn’t have the land to build a “home course,” or a five-hole par-3.
Some members of the TCU administration would like to forge a relationship with Colonial, which would include a facility at the country club.
The concept is to build a small facility with locker space, and access to the driving range, etc.
It could also serve as a means to do business for members of the TCU administration. A lot of business is done on a golf course.
This is all just a concept. To make this sort of facility a reality requires both space, and money.
“We have been competitive because of the coaches who have done everything they can to recruit,” Stanford said. “That’s what I loved about both Bill and Angie. They did it.
“But they need help.”
It is not like Angela Stanford to publicly criticize her alma mater.
She’s speaking up for a reason.
