Walking into Dan Brooks' office, it doesn't look like the office of a two-time national championship coach.
Tucked into a section off the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club's pro shop, the room is smaller than a single room in a residential hall and has long been filled with more trophies and plaques than it can hold, lining the walls and cabinet tops in row after row.
It's small, but it's the base from where Brooks has, for the last 18 years, been building one of the most formidable empires in college golf.
The team has won two national championships--the first in 1999 and again this summer, a third of all Duke championships and the only two in women's sports.
Just don't compare him to men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski.
"It makes me uncomfortable," Brooks says. "I'm not sitting here thinking, 'man I want to get that third championship....' I could win 10 more championships and, no question in my mind, he's still the best coach at Duke University. I wouldn't even entertain the thought... He inspires me."
Like Krzyzewski, Brooks did not start from scratch when he took his first head coaching job in 1985 at Duke, just four years out of the University of Oregon State.
Former coach Ron Schmid had taken women's golf--which has been at Duke since 1984--to a 7th place finish the previous season in only the second NCAA tournament for women's golf. Brooks, who helped run the golf course and taught golf on the side as well, got off to a rocky start though.
"There were a few years where we kind of got a little bit caught in political stuff and missed a couple of nationals but we were a borderline team," he said. "And if you're borderline, you're suspect."
By 1988, the team was competing in the nationals again and placed fifth in the NCAAs at Las Cruces, New Mexico, the highest finish at the time for the program, and a turning point for both the team and for Brooks, who thought about moving on to a school with an even greater reputation.
"If I was ever going to leave the job and make a move, that was the time," he said. "That was a time I was considering leaving... since we'd done well."
Since then, Brooks, who says he will stay at Duke as long as he coaches, has gotten many offers, including feelers from West Coast powerhouses San Jose State and Arizona State, and is acknowledged by his peers to be among the elite coaches of the sport.
"We're big rivals. We recruit the same people," said Dianne Dailey, Wake Forest's coach. "In the mid-1990s, we were pretty much neck-and-neck. But he's really done a great great job. But it's been a gradual kind of thing."
By the end of the 1990s, Duke was clearly the top team in the ACC and a perennial championship contender until its first win in 1999.
Brooks said the most recent championship was the sweetest, however, for a number of reasons. In 1999, Duke led the entire tournament and won in the middle of the fourth day when rain ended the tournament prematurely, with Arizona State catching up.
"People put a star on it because of the rain delay," said second-year Arizona coach Greg Allen. "Although they came back and hurt us this year, it was nice for Dan to win that second title and people have no questions about how he won it."
In 2002, the Blue Devils trailed Arizona from day one through nearly the end of the last day.
"I was on my way into the 18th green ready to pat everyone on the back for a great runner-up finish," he said. "That's how much I thought we might not pull it off."
He noted, however, that the chemistry was really good last year and that he did less coaching in the championship match than in any tournament the team had played in.
Beth Bauer, who played at Duke from 1998 until 2000 when she went pro, said Brooks' style has always been relatively hands-off.
"He's the kind of coach that's not really a kind of an overbearing coach," she said. "He definitely helps and gives input, but he doesn't really overteach us a lot."
Aside from Brooks' mellow demeanor, one of the most defining features of Duke's team is their international complexion--from Peruvian Anna Moreles to Brazilian Candy Hannemann to Thailand's Virada Nirapathpongporn--Brooks says he's never traveled outside the country to visit a recruit.
"International players come here and play in tournaments," he said.
Most recently, Brooks said most of his success comes from the opinions and friendships of his players. For instance, Beth Bauer, who left Duke after just two seasons in 2000 to go pro, was friends with Hannemann. Brooks said he had six players, but convinced Hannemann to come to Duke initially with just a partial scholarship; Hannemann went on to nab the individual NCAA title in 2001.
"People tend to think of this international thing as starting with [former player Jenny] Chausiriporn," Brooks said. "But Jenny's as American as you and me. She was born and raised in Maryland."
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