For media inquiries, please contact Lillie-Anne Mulligan at jordan.mulligan@wku.edu.
Adam Gary enters his 12th season as the WKU Lady Topper Golf coach in 2025-26, a position he assumed on June 12, 2014.
In 2024-25, Gary led WKU to a program-record four wins, including the Lady Toppers first conference championship and NCAA Regional appearance in the 48-year history of hte program. He was named Conference USA Coach of the Year for the second consecutive season.
Sydney Hackett won the CUSA Championship (second WKU golfer to do so in three seasons; Catie Craig in 2023) and was named CUSA Most Improved Golfer of the Year, finishing with the third-best stroke average (72.77) in school history. Hackett posted six Top 5s in 12 events. Catie Craig wrapped up her legendary WKU career and was named CUSA Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Hackett and Craig were named first team All-CUSA, while Averi Cline and Kaylee Dwyer were named second team.
Gary and the Lady Tops won four times during the spring, a feat that had never been accomplished prior to 2024-25. During the first 47 years of the program, WKU had never won more than twice in a season. Three individuals - Craig, Dwyer and Hackett - won tournaments, a feat only three Power Four programs accomplished during the season. WKU was one of 10 programs nationally with at least 107 head-to-head wins and 26 or fewer losses heading into NCAA Regionals.
Six times throughout the season a WKU golfer was named CUSA Golfer of the Week (Craig, Dwyer and Hackett twice each). A Lady Topper golfer finished in the Top 10 17 times during the 2024-25 season, with his golfers posting 27 total Top 20 finishes. WKU finished inside the Top 5 as a team eight times in 12 events, winning four, with two more runner up finishes.
In 2023-24, Gary led the Lady Toppers to two victories and seven top-two finishes. He was named Conference USA Coach of the Year. Junior Catie Craig earned an at-large bid to NCAA Regionals, her second consecutive season making it to the NCAA postseason. Craig earned two individual wins and finished in the top five in nine of 11 events. She did not finish outside the top 10 in any event through the Conference USA Championships.
In 2022-23, Craig became the first Lady Topper in program history to earn an NCAA Regional berth when she won the Conference USA individual title. Craig and Sarah Arnold each made the U.S. Women's Amateur in the summer of 2023, with Craig advancing to the Round of 16. Craig once again qualified for the event in the summer of 2024. Craig also won the 122nd North and South Amateur during the summer of 2024.
WKU has maintained a consistent spot within the Top 100 since first entering it in 2018-19. The Lady Toppers finished the 2022-23 season 84th, the best final Golfstat ranking in program history. He has led WKU to 15 All CUSA selections in the last 10 seasons, including Georgina Blackman as a four-time selection and Mary Joiner as a three-time selection.
Gary’s 11 titles are the most by any coach in Lady Topper Golf history, and he's the only coach in program history to win a tournament in each of his/her first five seasons at the helm. His latest team win was WKU's own Spring Break Shootout in the spring of 2024.
The Lady Toppers have made a steady climb under Gary's leadership. His eighth complete seasons at the helm have produced the best team stroke averages in the Lady Topper record books, improving almost every year under his tutelage. The 2020-21 season mark of 295.27 is the best in program history by 1.2 strokes. The 2022-23 season is the second-best team stroke average at 296.40 followed by the shortened 2019-20 season at 296.67.
Head coach Gary also helped lead the charge on opening and dedication of the Phillip
Hatchett Golf Facility on February 21, 2020. More information on the facility can be found
here.
The 2022-23 season was one of the most significant and successful to date in the Lady Topper Golf program history. WKU's Sydney Hackett won her first collegiate tournament at the USA Intercollegiate in the fall, following in the footsteps of Lady Topper legend Mary Joiner. Catie Craig won two individual tournaments, the first WKU women's golfer to claim two individual championships in the same season since Joiner in the fall of 2018.
One of Craig's wins was at the 2023 Conference USA Championships as she became the first Lady Topper golfer in WKU history to win a league title. The victory qualified her for the NCAA Regional, taking the Red Towel to Athens, Ga. She was the first female golfer from The Hill to ever compete in an NCAA Regional, tying for 31st overall.
Hackett was named CUSA Freshman of the Year while Craig claimed the Most Improved Golfer superlative award. The duo were also named to Third Team All CUSA as the team finished second at the league tournament, tying the best finish at a conference championship in program history.
One of Gary’s greatest accomplishments is leading WKU to a t-2
nd finish at the Conference USA Women’s Golf Championships in 2021. It ties the program’s best team finish ever at a conference tournament. The team also recorded the lowest round at a conference tournament in program history at 6-under 282 in the first round.
The 2021 Championships marked the end of two storied individual careers in Lady Topper history: those of Joiner and Megan Clarke. In Joiner’s five-year career under Gary, she never missed a round of competitive golf. She claimed six individual titles, a WKU and Conference USA record. She holds the program record for career stroke average at 73.92 as well as four of the top-six season stroke averages.
Clarke won an individual title in 2018-19, making it the first time in program history that two different golfers have won events in the same season. In 2018-19, the Lady Toppers had 21 top-25 individual performances across the season, including eight top-10s, five top-5s and three victories. They also had four top-4 team results.
In 2017-18, golfer Georgina Blackman became the first four-time all-conference selection in program history and finished fourth at the 2018 Conference USA Championship – the best conference tourney finish by a Lady Topper in 20 years. Clarke would later tie that record after tying for fourth at the C-USA Championships in 2021.
Joiner joined Blackman on the all-conference list as a first-team pick in 2017-18, marking the third time in four seasons that WKU has had multiple all-league selections. Joiner also gave the Lady Toppers three different first-team performers in as many years at that point.
The Lady Toppers finished the 2017-18 season with seven top-five team performances in 11 events, including six straight – and the first five of the spring – leading into the C-USA Championship. They had 29 top-20 finishes, as well as 17 top-10s.
Gary’s first campaign in 2015-16 was one of the best in school history to that point, with seven top-five finishes as a team and a championship at the Morehead State Citrus Challenge Invitational. The Lady Toppers closed the 2015-16 campaign by tying for fourth in the 2016 C-USA Championship, their best finish in a conference tournament since 1997.
A professional golfer since 2003 on both the US Pro Golf Tour (2003-2005) and the Egolf Professional Tour (2006-2009), Gary's familiarity with the professional game allows him a unique access to a wide range of touring professionals, coaches and professional instructors.
Since 2012, Gary has maintained the Adam Gary Golf Academy, where he instructs amateur and professional golfers. Gary has served as the Director of Golf at Kenny Perry's Country Creek golf course in Franklin, Ky, and he currently gives instruction at Indian Hills Country Club in Bowling Green. Gary, a Class A PGA member, holds TPI Level 1, US Kids Golf and SeeMore Putter Institute certifications as an instructor. He is also a certified club fitter from the game's top club manufacturers, Ping and Titleist.
As a player, Gary received instruction from PGA Teachers of the Year Jim Suttie and Todd Anderson. Gary graduated Magna Cum Laude from Florida Gulf Coast University in 2003 with his degree in Business Management.
As a collegian, Gary was a three-year captain at FGCU, and winner of the AASU Savannah South Bridge Collegiate, Doral Resort Intercollegiate, and Coca Cola Intercollegiate.
He earned All-State honors and was an American Junior Golf Association All-American as a high school product out of Greenwood High, where he was a six-year letterman. Gary was also the Kentucky Junior Amateur Champion in 1997.
Gary is married to the former Ashlee Conway, of Central City. The couple has three children, Davis and twins Lane and Brooks.
