Scott Simpson has enjoyed success at nearly every stage of a golf career that spans six decades.
The 67-year-old won consecutive NCAA men’s golf titles (1976, 1977), was the recipient of the 1977 Fred Haskins Award as the best male collegiate golfer, played on a Walker Cup team (1977), won seven times on the PGA Tour, including the 1987 U.S. Open (in exactly 600 career starts), represented the Stars and Stripes in the Ryder Cup (1987) and picked a pretty good spot — Pebble Beach — for his one and only PGA Tour Champions triumph.
Simpson last played more than a handful of senior events in 2016 and called it quits in 2020 but as he told Golfweek during an interview at the 2023 Sony Open in Hawaii, he wasn’t the type to sit around in retirement and watch the grass grow.
Instead, after moving to Hawaii full time in 2014, he volunteered at the local First Tee chapter and with the Hawaii State Junior Golf Association and dabbled in some coaching at the high school and college level before being named men’s coach of the University of Hawaii in 2021.
Imagine being coached by a winner of the U.S. Open.
“It’s so fun,” Simpson said. “Hopefully they’re learning some things and I don’t mess them up.”
Here’s more from a riveting conversation with Simpson, who discusses among other things how he ended up in Hawaii coaching the men’s golf team, why nice guys don’t finish last and what happened to his Magnum P.I. mustache.
Golfweek: How did you wind up in Hawaii?
Scott Simpson: My wife. She grew up in Oahu, and her dad was in the Navy. He repaired periscopes. Her parents retired in San Diego, and I met her in high school. She was 17. She’s always considered Hawaii home. I’ve always loved Hawaii. We always knew we’d come back here. We came back every year anyway, at least once or twice. My wife said, ‘We’ll just stay here and sprinkle our ashes in Kailua Bay.’ That’ll be good enough.
GW: You were helping out with the women's team, but what made you think you wanted to do it full-time and be the men's coach at U of H?
SS: Well, I hate to say it, but our men’s team was terrible. They were ranked like 245th in the country out of 300. I knew some of the boys around the team or coming on the team, and I actually felt bad for them because no one ever got better. I thought I could do a better job, thought I could help the boys. It was mostly just helping out the kids on the team. Even when I applied for the men’s job it’s like, ‘I’ve got no bargaining power here because I’m not leaving.’ You don’t give me the job, I’m not going anywhere else, and I’m not using this job for like a stepping-stone or something, which it could be. I don’t know how long I’ll do it but it’s fun.
One of the parents asked me, ‘Do you discipline them? Do you ever really get on the kids?’ I said, ‘I’ll never yell at them. If you’re looking for that, it’s not going to be me.’ I said, ‘But I’ll be honest. If they mess up, I’ll tell them, golly, that was horrible.’ They’ll say, ‘Yeah, I played terrible,’ and I’ll go, ‘Yeah, you sure did. But how are we going to get better?’ That’s what I always say: ‘What are we going to do to improve?’ There’s nothing wrong with having a bad day; nothing wrong with making a bad decision, but how are we going to improve, what are we going to learn from that?
GW: You said the team was ranked 240th or so. What has it improved to?
GW: How has technology changed the way you teach your team?
SS: Oh, changed everything. Well, it’s changed everything like in the long swing. It’s all about power now and speed. In the old days, you could swing really hard at it, but the harder you would swing, the more spin you’d put on the ball, so it would go off line farther, and even into the wind it wasn’t as good. You had to learn to kind of flight the ball down. You had to learn how to hit it straight, like Tom Kite and Hale Irwin. Those are the guys who made checks every week. I wanted to be more like them.
When I was a kid, I would rip it, and then I had to learn how to keep it in play. Now everyone is trying to just rip it, hit it a long way. The thing these kids have to do is they’ve got to get really good with their wedges from 100 yards in.
GW: Do you think yourself and Corey Pavin, who were notably shorter hitters, would be able to compete in today's game?
SS: Yeah, that’s a good question. I remember talking to Larry Mize, he said, ‘We would have learned a different way.’ I know I would have learned a lot differently. I would get more into my right side, I’d lag the club more, probably be using the speed sticks and doing all that stuff. I think most of us would have learned how to bomb it because we were so competitive that I think we would have learned a different way, but I think we probably would have been pretty good.
GW: Was Larry Mize your closest friend on the PGA Tour?
SS: He’d probably be my best friend out there, yeah. Californian and a Georgian, but we have the same agent, and then we both won majors the same year (1987) and we ended up playing in these tournaments like the Swiss Open at Crans-sur-Sierre. It was beautiful there. We both went over and our wives became pretty good friends and his kids were just a little younger than mine, so they all became friends. It was really good. I just don’t call him often enough. I don’t call anybody very good. I’m better at texting and emailing. He likes calling. He’s still playing the Champions Tour, or at least I think he wants to. I got tired of the travel.
GW: When did you know it was time to call it a day?
SS: My son was trying to make it in music and he quit, and I said, ‘Do you want to caddie for me?’ So the last few years he caddied for me and I probably played a little longer than I probably wanted to. But it was fun traveling with him. I wasn’t playing as well, and I wasn’t working hard at it, either. Those things go together. Even now, I’ll watch and say, ‘Wow, that would be fun to be playing the tournament,’ but then you think, yeah, then you’ve got to go back to the hotel room and hang out there. I kind of like going home. I like just staying here, going home to my dogs and my wife. It’s all good.
GW: You were known as a 'nice guy.' What do you think of the saying 'nice guys finish last'?
SS: Two-word answer: Byron Nelson. He was the best. He was a great person, a nice guy. I think it’s wrong just because I think you can be – my buddy Larry Mize, he wasn’t coming last all the time. Nicest guy.
I think you can be a really good person. I think you can be humble and competitive at the same time. Nowadays we’ve got, there’s so many good guys on Tour I like rooting for. Jordan Spieth, pretty humble, nice, seems like a great guy, and competitive as they get; Justin Thomas, there’s a lot of good guys on Tour now. This Tom Kim coming up sure seems fun to root for.
GW: Did you ever lose your temper or throw a club?
SS: Yes. I was terrible as a kid.
GW: Really?
SS: Yeah, got kicked out of junior golf twice. I tell my kids, all you’ve got to do is learn from it.
The trouble was my dad was a really good player, and he had a really bad temper and he would break clubs. But he was very honest and just the utmost integrity. So he couldn’t tell my brother and I not to do it, because he did. He could say, don’t do it, but he never disciplined us for it.
Craig Stadler had the reputation of being a hot-head because he’d throw his clubs in his bag. He would toss clubs. Never broke a club. I broke clubs all the time, but I was known as Mr. Calm. I would mostly be calm, but there were times in golf I’d just lose it. It was embarrassing. I’d throw clubs, threw my bag down, just lose it. Golf will do it to you.
GW: What course did you grow up playing?
SS: A little course called Stardust in San Diego. It’s not there anymore, but it was a great course. (Phil) Mickelson played a lot down there, too. I remember the first tournament I won, the 1980 Western Open, so I must have been 24, and this little kid comes up to me, ‘Mr. Simpson, congratulations on your win. That was so exciting.’ It was a 10-year-old Phil. Even then he’d be the kid where you’d see him on the chipping green, you’d tee off, make the turn, still over there, finish your round, still over there. Let me tell you, there’s a reason he’s so good around the greens. Yeah, he was great as a junior, all the way through. Too bad he lost it now. I’m not a big LIV fan.
I grew up on that course, which had three nines. My dad was a schoolteacher. He didn’t have much money. But all the gamblers would play down there, so my dad would play with all of the gamblers and a lot of the pros would come down. Everyone from San Diego, Lon Hinkle, a lot of college guys would come and play because you could always get a game. The third nine was always somehow open, so I could always go out and play. You’re only supposed to hit two balls, and I’d be hitting five, six, seven balls, learned to look around, make sure the marshal wasn’t coming. I got kicked off a couple times. But it was a great place to grow up and learn how to play. A lot of kids. Junior golf was fun.
That’s what I tell parents all the time: Make it fun. Then your kids want to play. You have to practice, but if they want a day off, let them have a day off. But if it’s not fun, they’re not going to get any good anyway.
GW: Do you think your career would be looked at differently had you beaten Payne Stewart in the playoff at the 1991 U.S. Open and become a two-time major winner?
SS: Yeah, I wonder. I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think it would be much different just because half the people I meet think I won two U.S. Opens. I have to say no, just won one, lost in a playoff (1991). Oh, that’s still good. Yeah, it is good. Winning a U.S. Open is good. But I don’t know if it would be much different.
It would be a lot different if I didn’t win a U.S. Open like a Jay Haas, Scott Hoch, those guys were really good, but they never won a major. I’m glad I didn’t think about that then, put more pressure on myself. But yeah, the older you get, you think, ‘Wow, that really is pretty good I won a U.S. Open.’
GW: How much do you still play?
SS: My left knee kind of went bad like a year ago or so. Unfortunately, I broke my right ankle once. I end up kind of hitting it flatfooted. It’s not good. Every step I take, I can feel it. I can’t turn through the shot very good. I did play the other day, though. I’m like a good 5 handicap. I hack it around. I can chip and putt, except I’m fatting these wedges. I started getting better towards the end. I might play a little bit just for fun. I get out there with the kids, too, watch them knock it 90 yards by me.
GW: What's your favorite golf story you tell the kids over dinner at Shoney's?
SS: I used to tell Bill Murray stories – his longtime AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am partner – but my favorite story these days is Tom Kim. I’ll tell this as long as I live probably.
So Greensboro, he hits it in a bunker at the first hole of the tournament, bad lie, barely gets it out. He’s over the green. He makes an 8 on a par 4, no penalty strokes. Now, most of us would be pissed. I’m not sure if my driver would make it to the second tee in the old days.
He gets to the second tee, walks up to his caddie and just starts laughing, like ‘Can you believe that hole? I’ve never done anything like that before. That was amazing.’
Then he says, ‘You know what? We’re going to miss the cut anyway now. I just quadrupled the first hole. There are 35 holes to go, let’s just make a bunch of birdies. I might as well try to make birdies for the fun of it.’
So he went out and just stayed relaxed, he stayed positive, he didn’t have any expectations, and so he just goes out, and next thing you know he makes seven birdies. ‘Well, that was fun.’
Next day, plays pretty good, ends up winning the tournament by five shots. So that’s my favorite golf story by far is his mindset of how he handled practically the worst start you can have, and to still stay positive like that and to still be in some ways thankful that I’m on Tour, I get to try to make birdies. I’m still on the PGA Tour, even making 8’s. That story I’ll tell forever just because of his attitude, walking to the second hole.
GW: Inquiring minds want to know, when did you shave off your trademark mustache?
SS: It’s been quite a while, 15-20 years. I told my wife, what’s the use of having a mustache if it’s gray? I said, I can either dye it or shave it, and I know I’m not dyeing it. I know I’m not doing that.
GW: I mentioned to my editor that I was going to be talking to you, and he didn't know you were in Hawaii. He said, that's funny because you used to look like Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I. He said, ‘Ask if him if he's living with Higgins?’
SS: (Laughs) Not with Higgins, although in the new Magnum P.I. Higgins was a girl. I don’t watch the show. I watched some of it originally, but we did watch the old Tom Selleck one. My wife loved him. He was a (USC) Trojan like me. That’s probably where the similarities end.
Yeah, he used to drive a Ferrari around on the show. But he’s like 6-4 or something, and they had to take the roof off because he couldn’t get in it. That’s why every shot of him in the Ferrari is always with the roof down.
So just shaved it off. Don’t need to look older. Although I’ve thought about it, and the team says, ‘Grow your mustache back, Coach.’ So maybe sometime I will. But my wife said, ‘No, don’t do it.’
