February 4, 2025 • by Marcus El & Dan Davies
Chris Malloy and Jake Amos go way back. Malloy gave Amos his break in coaching, employing him as his assistant at the University of South Florida, and the pair have been tight ever since.
This season, Coach Malloy’s Ole Miss team has won twice and is currently ranked No.1. In his first season as Head Coach at Louisiana State, (#7), Coach Amos’ team also has two wins.
On the eve of their high-flying teams coming face to face again in Puerto Rico, Scoreboard presents selected highlights from a conversation recorded at the recent GCAA Convention in Vegas. You can watch the conversation in full on our YouTube channel.
“Coaches are different and players are different. That's okay. You look at my team. Michael Le Sasso and Cam Tankersley are both really good at golf. They are complete opposites in how they go about their business and what their personalities are. I think that's good. You don't want it to be comfortable at home all the time. You want somebody that's kind of riding your butt and you want them not wanting to lose to each other, right?”
“Friction is good. Being uncomfortable creates growth, especially if there's a real competitive rivalry in that team. It doesn't all have to be sunshine and roses to get better. In chaos, there can be a lot of opportunity. We're recruiting alphas basically. You put them all together... and they're not just going to accept somebody else being better.”
“[Working as Malloy’s assistant at the USF] was the perfect first job for me. I had zero experience so I had no idea what to do. I had to go and proactively find out how to do things.”
“I'd ask [Trey Jones at FSU], ‘Okay, how do I do this?’ He’d say, ‘I don't know, go figure it out.’ And I did. I made a lot of mistakes along the way but I learned more from those mistakes more than I would have if there was just some set way to do every single thing. JT Higgins, who was at Texas A&M, was a big believer in that as well... Buddy Alexander was really big on that too. People look at Buddy as being old school and just set in one way. He really wasn't. I used to always pick those guys’ brains and watch how they handled their assistant coaches and did things.”
“My thing is the freak factor, it goes back to Josh Gregory and my Augusta days. If you're not on the team, you'd better be good at something. Finding something that sets you apart on that team is really important. That gets my attention.”
“Recruiting visits are cool. You're there because you're good at golf and somebody wants you. But you have to ask really tough questions in that process. I'd be really scared if I were a recruit and I went to a school for a recruiting visit and that coach didn't ask me any tough questions.”
“This is my forever job. I didn't want to have this job to get another one. So everything from facilities to culture, to personnel, I didn't want a quick fix. I wanted to do it the right way.”
“We were underrated. People weren't really talking about us, and rightly so. Nobody knew how everyone was going to fit in. I basically Moneyballed it a little bit in terms of the roster that I built.”