Story, images and audio by Shayna Brown

Mike Duggan stands proudly beside his wall of golf balls and his souvenir from his time coaching Team Canada in 2008

It’s one thing to be able to do something you love for a living, but it’s another to take something you love and turn it into a world of success and triumph for not only yourself but the people around you.

Mike Duggan has taken his passion for golf and turned it into a stream of success with this season being his 12th season as the golf coach here at Durham College. It’s interesting, he explained, because he got the position by a fluke.

Budget cuts in the early nineties had left the Golf Program discontinued, but Duggan was given the opportunity to re-introduce it. He was coaching girl’s basketball at the time, but a father of a Durham College student made an offer to the Athletics Department that Duggan couldn’t refuse.

“This dad came in and said I will help sponsor the golf team if you bring it back. We didn’t have a golf coach or anything like that, so I said, ‘I golf. I’d love to do it.’ And that was the start of it.”

The man’s son was Brian McNair, who is now the head professional at St. Andew’s Valley East Golf Course.

From the time when Duggan re-started the Golf Program in the 1996-97 season, it has grown from recruiting students to play golf to now, where the program is ranked number three in Ontario and top ten in Canada.

Duggan has grown alongside the program and changed the life of golf for college students. He took Canadian college golf teams from competing provincially to nationally by starting the CCAA PING National Golf Championships.

“Golf has come full circle in the OCAA and now all of a sudden we have it across Canada”

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A hole in one for Duggan

The next biggest thing in his years as coach, he explained, was going to South Africa with Team Canada for the World Golf University Championships as the assistant coach. There Duggan got to work beside the head coach, Ray Chateau from Humber College, who is his mentoring coach.

“I learn so much from him when we were in South Africa, I thought this was the greatest thing,” he explained. “You get to put the Canadian flag on your chest and you’re representing Canada. It’s not hockey or anything like that, but its’ still that exciting feeling.”

This year Duggan has been named to Team Canada again to join them in Spain for another world championship.

Through all his success and ventures during his time as golf coach here at Durham he said his players and their success and their joy is the most rewarding part of the job.

“The biggest thing is that it’s all about the kids. They are the ones that bring the success…As long as they had fun doing what we do, that’s the most important part. But I still want that National Championship,” he said laughing, “that’s the ultimate goal.”