L.A. UNIVERSITY BEAT / WENDY WITHERSPOON : New Golf Coach Empey Learned About USC Expectations Long Ago

Jim Empey remembers playing his first round of golf as a USC player in 1980.

He shot a 79.

Having played golf for only three years before entering USC, where he was a walk-on, Empey was pretty impressed with his score.

Beaming, he handed his card to the assistant coach.

But the coach asked, disappointedly, “What happened?”

It was then that Empey decided he needed to set his standards higher. He eventually became USC team captain.

Empey carried his high standards around the world on a seven-year professional golf career. He brought them back to USC in December when he was named Trojan coach.

Empey, 32, replaced Randy Lein, who resigned in October after nine years to become coach at Arizona State.

As a player at USC, Empey was known for enjoying challenges.

“Whenever the playing conditions got really severe, where the majority of players would be thinking they would rather not be playing, Jim would enjoy it,” said Lein, who coached Empey during his senior season. “He would play that much harder. His best finishes, by and large, were under the toughest conditions.”

Trojan tradition is nothing new to Empey. He grew up in Baldwin Hills with a brother and two sisters who also graduated from USC. His father was a sociology professor at USC from 1963-83.

Trojan football games were a part of life for Empey’s family.

“Pat Haden was my idol when I was in high school,” Empey said. “I wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar and play golf.”

Empey never was a Rhodes Scholar, as Haden had been, but Empey’s academic achievement at USC is noteworthy. As a senior in 1983, Empey’s 3.5 grade-point average earned him the Willis O. Hunter Academic Achievement Award for the senior athlete with highest cumulative GPA.

According to Chris Zambri, currently USC’s top player, Empey’s enthusiasm for USC has not waned.

“For a lot of people, maybe (USC) means something, and for a lot of people maybe it doesn’t,” said Zambri, a senior. “A lot of us (players) weren’t so sure what it was supposed to mean. Jim makes it more apparent. You can tell that the school and the tradition is very important to him.”

After graduating from USC with a degree in communications, Empey played professionally on the Asian, Golden State and Australian tours. He also has worked as a teaching professional at Riviera Country Club and as an assistant professional at Sherwood Country Club.

But by the time Empey played in the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, he was disillusioned with the vagabond lifestyle and the fleeting success of his pro golf career. This prompted his return to USC, which happily welcomed him home.

“He had tremendous qualifications,” said Don Winston, USC senior associate athletic director. “He had very fine USC ties. He had teaching experience, which is very important in college. All of those things, when you put them together, we thought he was the best of the best.”

Empey is charged with leading a Trojan program that has had 24 top-10 finishes in the NCAA tournament, dating back to 1940.

In Empey’s first two tournaments as coach, he led USC to a 12th-place finish in Hawaii Hilo Invitational on Feb. 15 and to an 11th-place finish in the John Burns Invitational at Honolulu on Feb. 19.

For David Swatik, a junior swing hitter who left the top-ranked UCLA men’s volleyball team on Feb. 11, there was more to his decision to quit the Bruin team than simply losing his starting position.

“It’s just the way that the program is run and there is no real communication among coaches and players,” Swatik said. “The playing time, that was not so important (in the decision to leave).”

Swatik started for UCLA the past two seasons, leading the Bruins in digs. He started when UCLA won the UC Santa Barbara tournament on Jan. 16, but Kevin Wong, a sophomore who was a reserve last season, has started since then.

Al Scates, UCLA coach, said that he was not surprised at Swatik’s decision to leave.

“Once David lost his starting position, his skills began to erode and his tenacity wasn’t there,” Scates said. “He didn’t try harder. He seemed to lose spirit.”

Swatik was bothered by uncertainty about his starting spot.

“All of a sudden you’re starting one day and then all of a sudden you’re out of the lineup for good almost,” Swatik said. “I didn’t feel like any of the coaches had any confidence in me. I don’t feel like I got any better at UCLA because of the way that they run the program and because of the way that they deal with the players,” Swatik said.

Scates said that Swatik was the best player in his freshman class, which included current starters Erik Sullivan and Jeff Nygaard, but Wong recently improved beyond Swatik.

Wong, 6-foot-7, also is taller than Swatik, 6-4.

“The program is very competitive and David is the type of player who needed constant nurturing and constant reinforcement,” Scates said. “He was the type of player who would do better if you said, ‘David, this is your position no matter what happens.’ That’s not the type of program we have. Our program is the type where you go out and compete and if someone is better, he gets (the starting position). . . . We don’t sit around and rap with the players, until they graduate.”

Scates has coached UCLA to 15 national championships in the past 30 years.

Swatik will work toward earning his degree at UCLA and also will play in professional beach volleyball tournaments.

Notes

The 1992 NCAA men’s volleyball champion, Pepperdine, and this season’s top-ranked team, UCLA, have split two matches this season. Pepperdine, ranked third, upset UCLA, 15-12, 14-16, 15-13, 15-0, Thursday night at Malibu. On Feb. 5, UCLA defeated Pepperdine in three games at Westwood.

The USC women’s tennis team began its Pacific 10 Conference season with two wins, sweeping Arizona and Arizona State, Feb. 12-13, at home. USC had only two Pac-10 wins in the past two seasons, combined. . . . Eleventh-ranked USC upset ninth-ranked Pepperdine, 5-1, in the second round of the Intercollegiate Tennis Assn. women’s national indoor team championship, Feb. 25.

The fifth-ranked UCLA men’s tennis team upset top-ranked USC, 7-0, in the semifinals of the ITA men’s indoor team championship at Louisville, Ky., Feb. 17-21, before defeating 17th-ranked Tennessee, 5-2, in the final. . . . The Trojans played without No. 2 singles player David Ekerot, ranked 37th, who had an injured hip. Wayne Black replaced Ekerot. . . . USC and UCLA will meet next in a Pac-10 dual match, March 10, at UCLA at 1:30 p.m.