Oliver Whatley begins what he hopes will be a long coaching career in familiar surroundings. He played golf for Rutgers University for four years, clocking up 34 tournament starts, winning a tournament in his freshman year and earning a PING All-Region selection before graduating in 2021. Now he is back with the Scarlet Knights as Assistant Coach, working under Head Coach Rob Shutte, who has been assiduously building the program’s profile over the last 12 years. 

Whatley replaces another former Rutgers player in the role, which he describes as as "setting up practices, looking at data and seeing the bigger picture of the team".

“I'm passionate about player development,” explains the Chevy Chase, Maryland native. “It's nice being able to give back my experience, having been coached by Coach Shutte and now working alongside him. I want to use all those experiences to help the future generations of professional players.”

Rutgers has been knocking on the door of postseason for a while. The team finished last season ranked 91 and put up a 62% win rate, beating 10 out of 13 of the Big Ten schools they played, including bettering Illinois for the first time in program history.

This season, the team will feature a blend of experience in seniors and the sophomore Derek Gutierrez, who recently won the New Jersey State Open, and promise in an exciting group of freshman players, which sees the number one junior players from Rhode Island, Maryland and West Virginia arrive in Brunswick, New Jersey. It’s a new start that excites Oliver, who was fresh off two months of recruiting work in Europe when he spoke with us. 

You've gone from recently being a player to part of the coaching team. What do you wish you'd known as a player?

Oliver Whatley: I'd say the biggest aspect was the ability to be open to feedback in a better way. I was very specific in the way that I played and thought about the game. Maybe at times I wasn’t the most open-minded in being able to have that trust in the coaching staff to look at better ways of doing things. I was very specific in the ways that I did things. I think if I could do it again, I would be a little bit more open-minded. 

The other aspect would be trying to just get better at small things every single day. Over four years I had the pleasure of playing with Chris Gotterup, who's now on the PGA Tour and extremely successful. Being able to play with a player like that and seeing what he did behind the scenes and how he worked with Coach Shutte shows the kind of player that you can become if you just work day by day on certain aspects.

“We're looking at stats. We're seeing where guys are. We're very data driven with a lot of the practices we do”

I think what really benefited Chris was his ability to really commit to his goals and work with Coach Shutte and just be really resilient in the ways that he could get better as a player. He hits it really far but there are certain aspects, like wedges and putting, where over time he got a lot better. I believe that's really propelled him into where he is now.

‍You’ve got some exciting new recruits coming in this season? What does Rutgers look for in the players it recruits?

‍Oliver Whatley: They’re all extremely motivated. They love golf, which is important to us. We want guys that love the game, who want to just hit the ground running, who want to be coached. A huge aspect that we're recruiting in now is just the ability to be coached and the ability to be open to constructive criticism. 

We're looking at stats. We're seeing where guys are. We're very data driven with a lot of the practices that we do. Technology has allowed us to be more data driven. We're not really speaking to the players out of emotion or about the things that we're seeing. It's data-driven, factual information, so having players that are receptive to that information is extremely important to us.

We track a lot of data, especially in the off-season when we're in our football bubble. We're tracking how far guys are hitting it away from certain distances to get baseline testing of where guys are at. 

Our football bubble is a huge facility. We can get in there and hit up to 140 yards, so we do a lot of testing and combines. Being able to see the ball fly in a very consistent environment with no wind and no conditions means you can really dial it in. We see some of our best ball striking come in early spring because of that facility.

“We see some of our best ball striking come in early spring because of the Rutgers Football Bubble”

Some of our best players, such as Chris [Gotterup], came into the program in the football bubble and averaged maybe three and half to four yards off. By the time he left, Chris was one of the best wedge players on the team averaging 1.5 to 1.6 yards off from each distance. Over time we can track and see how guys are progressing. It’s about holding players accountable and holding coaches accountable for that information. I'm tracking a lot of data and we're looking at that data and organising practices around it.

‍Rutgers has been using Clippd since last Spring. How easy or otherwise has it been to get the players to lean into collecting their data?

‍Oliver Whatley: Derek Gutierrez tested Clippd for us pretty much all of last spring. We wanted him to do that because we knew he'd run with it and really engage in the process. He is an example of what can happen if you commit to that process of putting in your rounds, using Clippd in practice and putting and things like that. It really does propel you as a player. That, along with Derek's work ethic, is why he is where he is today. 

I would say Clippd definitely plays a big role in where he is. He's integrated Clippd into his daily routines and has built confidence and consistency, specifically around his putting, which was an area that he could improve on. Using the practice drills and the tracking that Clippd provides brings facts into the equation. It eliminates a lot of the emotion.

“Eliminating emotion from the rounds and just speaking to facts is extremely important”

Players are extremely emotional when it comes to rounds. You can get off a golf course and think you didn't hit it that well but then you enter the round in stats and it's a different story. Eliminating that emotion from the rounds and just speaking to facts is extremely important.

I think that just leads to the building of confidence and enhancing skills. With some players, it's harder to get them to buy into the process, but as you recruit better and better players, you hope that it goes in line with buying into that process of entering rounds, entering data, things like that.

‍How do you use Clippd to in your day-to-day work with Rutgers?

‍Oliver Whatley: I'd say there are two parts. There's the individual player meetings where we dive into those individual stats. Clippd directs conversation: where are the player’s strengths and then what are certain areas that he can improve on as a player? Then as a team, it helps to streamline the process of identifying trends and patterns between each player. We can create practices around these trends. So, it really depends whether we’re speaking with a player directly or to the team as a whole. 

“It's one decision here, one decision there that really separates us from being in the postseason”

‍What do you think you will need to do this year to make it to the postseason?

‍Oliver Whatley: We did the calculations and it was an average of about three shots per tournament that we needed to improve on as a team. That's fractions of shots per round that we're trying to make up. That's where the sport is, being just a fraction of a shot better. Having players buy into that is really important. It's one decision here, one decision there that really separates us from being in the postseason.

‍You played under Rob Shutte and now you're working alongside him. How would you describe him as a coach? 

‍Oliver Whatley: He's extremely competitive. He wants to win and he hates losing. It's important to have a coach like that. When I was in the program, we didn't have the facilities that we have today. He's worked endlessly to get where we are today with facilities, but we still have a lot of work to do. He is the kind of coach to get his hands dirty and build things on his own. He built our putting greens when I was in school. He built our hitting nets when I was in school. He is the kind of guy that does not come up with an excuse, he just does it and gets to work. 

He's worked extremely hard to fundraise and get the facilities and technologies that we have today. That goes to show that the Rutgers program is on the rise, but we need to keep competing with what other schools have as well. But we have that Jersey grit in our culture. We don't come up with excuses. We use what we have and we've been able to beat some of the best teams in the country with the facilities that we have. It goes to show that it's all about work ethic and perspective and the attitude that you bring towards playing the game. 

It's also the relationships that we have with local clubs. We're playing top-100 golf courses week in, week out; great courses like Plainfield, Baltusrol, Metededonc National, Somerset Hills, Bayonne, Galloway National, Mountain Ridge and others. A lot of schools may play just their university course but we have the ability to bounce around and play a lot of great championship courses as well. 

We have great relationships with alumni and donors and the pros at these courses, which goes to show the culture within our program. We’re always networking and shaking hands and not only representing the school in the best way possible, but also our last names as well.

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