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Head Coach Dr. Jerry Surratt
E-mail Coach Surratt: surratt@wingate.edu
Call Coach Surratt: 704-233-8385

Dr. Jerry Surratt is entering his third season as head men’s and women’s golf coach at Wingate University in 2007. A longtime professor and administrator at Wingate, Surratt is helping to build the Bulldog golf program into a contender in the South Atlantic Conference.

In 2005-06, the Wingate men earned a solid fifth-place finish in the Outback Steakhouse Intercollegiate at Panama City, Fla. in a strong field of sixteen teams. The Bulldog men had an outstanding 2006 fall season, setting the stage for great expectations in the spring. Both sophomore Shane Dyer and senior Garrett Davitt were named to All-Tournament teams during the fall of 2006. 

The Bulldog women won the 2006 St. Andrews Presbyterian College Invitational.

The Wingate women’s team picked up significant hardware at the Food Lion SAC tournament, including SAC Scholar Athlete of the Year honors for Martina Moo Young. Beth Kirkham and Shannon Smith made the All-SAC team, while Kacie Braxton (Graham, was voted SAC Freshman of the Year.

Dr. Surratt is quick to acknowledge his assistants. “Their value to the program cannot be measured,” Surratt noted. The coaching team includes assistant coaches James Ambrose and Keith McGirt, both former Wingate linksters. The team also has access to PGA Teaching Professional Wally Moore of Eagle Chase Golf Club.

Surratt came to Wingate as a student-athlete and lettered in basketball and tennis. After completing his professional preparation at Wake Forest University and Emory University, he returned to Wingate in 1967 to teach on the faculty. Dr. Surratt’s primary focus has been in administration, although he has continued to teach at least one course each semester.

He served as Academic Dean during the 1970s, returned to fulltime teaching during Wingate’s early years as a baccalaureate institution. Surratt concluded his professional career of thirty-four years as Dean of the Charles A. Cannon College of Arts and Sciences. Since retiring in 2001, Surratt has continued to teach North Carolina history each year.

Coach Surratt’s first experience with golf came when he walked with friends on the Wingate Golf Team in a match at Monroe Country Club in the 1950s. Soon afterward, he tried the game himself and experienced both the frustration and exhilaration of the novice golfer. His play became regular in adulthood and fascination became commitment to a lifelong recreational pursuit.

Wingate’s second-year coach has competed locally in club championships and on the Charlotte Senior Amateur Tour. He led the field in the senior’s championships at Monroe Country Club in 1993 and 1994 and won first place in the First Flight in the Eagle Chase Club Championship in 1998.

Another of coach Surratt’s passions is travel. He has led a dozen Wingate Winternational groups to the capital cities of Europe and helped students experience new vistas in a world outside our United States. Combining golf and travel, Surratt organized and led two groups of Wingate Alumni golfers on trips to Great Britain and Ireland in 1995 and 1997, playing the classic courses at St. Andrews, Muirfield, Carnoustie, Turnberry, Ballybunion, Lahinch and Walton Heath.

Surratt participated in the early 1990s development of Eagle Chase Golf Club in Marshville, where the Wingate teams practice and play. He plays there regularly to a handicap of 8 and can tell the Wingate team about “hilly lies” and “quirky breaks” on the rolling greens. Surratt has served on the Eagle Chase Board of Directors since 1996 and has held the office of President since 1998.

Surratt is committed to building a quality program at Wingate. The most important goal for the Wingate golfer, as indeed every student-athlete, is an education which will prepare him or her for life-long learning in the adult world.

Secondly, Wingate golf will promote the great values of the game: honesty, integrity, esteem for one’s competitors, modesty in victory and self-respect in defeat. And finally, Wingate golfers will strive intensely to master the challenges of the course and to surpass the efforts of fellow players in the spirit of individual and team competition.