Name – Dan Nelson
UW-Stout graduation year – 2012
Major – Golf Enterprise Management
Sport Played – Men's Golf
Years Played – 2008-2012
Hometown (High School) – Menomonie, MHS
Currently Reside – Las Vegas, Nev.
Give us a brief synopsis of your life since graduating from UW-Stout? include job and family.
After college I took a job as an assistant golf pro at The Wilds Golf Club in Prior Lake, Minn. I worked there for one season and in the winter of 2013 I moved to Las Vegas to escape the snow. I started at Southern Highlands as a caddy in October 2013 and have since moved into an Outside Services Manager position.
I met my wife Ashlin in 2015 and we recently got married on Dec. 12, 2020, in the backyard of our first house together. Ashlin played college basketball at St. Leo University in Tampa, Fla. and now coaches a club team in Vegas called 24/7 Hoops as well as a local team at Faith Lutheran Middle School
.
How are you using your Stout education in your occupation? In your daily life?
Stout has prepared me for management situations now that I am in the position to use those skills. I have a small staff of 12 guys but I often step in as caddy master, which is another roster of about 30 caddies to manage. I try my best to walk the line between being a friend and being a manager, as I think if you become too much of just one, you can't be the other.
Why did you choose to be a collegiate student-athlete at UW-Stout, especially being a Menomonie native and deciding to stay in town to go to school?
By the time I was ready to graduate high school, I had no scholarship offers from golf programs, but I knew I wanted to play college golf. I had already been working at UW-Stout in the Sports Information Department for about a year, so I knew a lot of coaches and loved the work I was doing. The GEM (golf enterprise management) program was appealing to me so I decided to stay where I was in Menomonie. I walked on the golf team through try-outs my freshman year and stayed on the squad all four years.
What did you like most about competing in collegiate athletics?
The best part of college sports for me was being part of a team and creating relationships on the golf course. Golf is a great sport to make relationships. I could trace about every relationship in my life back to someone I met through golf and probably through college golf. It was a great networking opportunity for my career in addition to being a competitive sport. I loved being part of a team and a lot of my teammates at Stout are still great friends of mine today.
What is the greatest lesson you learned from being a collegiate student-athlete?
I think learning that your results on the field are rarely the most important thing. If I have advice for underclassmen in any sport it's to be a good teammate and act professionally regardless of your performance. I regret the times when I would get down on myself and sulk away 18 holes and represent my team and school in a negative light. What's important is to be classy, be professional and be an encouraging teammate and competitor no matter what. In my opinion those are more important things in the big picture.
Who are the most influential persons in your athletic career?
I worked for UW-Stout Sports Information Director
Layne Pitt while I was a senior in high school and all throughout college and I learned more about sports from Layne than anyone I've ever met. In addition to learning about how the NCAA works, how conferences work, how teams operate, etc, I learned a lot about running sporting events and learned how to take stats for every sport that Stout offered. I also learned a lot about writing and formatting text and even a little photography and photo editing. Layne and I are both avid sports fans and I am lucky to have absorbed so much from him over the years.
Which former Blue Devil student-athletes are you still in contact with?
I keep in touch with nearly everyone who I played college golf with. As a group we try to get together at least once a year to play some golf and have some fun off the course as well. Living in Las Vegas, I get a lot of visitors so I'm lucky to stay in touch with former Blue Devils that way, too.
How would your teammates describe you as a person and as a student-athlete?
That's a question for them!! But I hope they would consider me a good teammate and leader and an approachable friend if they ever needed anything. We were only teammates for a few years but I'm happy to call them all lifelong friends.
What are some of your career highlights, both athletically and academically?
I haven't continued playing competitive golf past college, so athletically my career highlights were the big tournaments and memorable scores at Stout. I'll never forget making the roster for Nationals as a freshman and shooting my best round of the year (73) in the first round there. At the time that was one of the best rounds of my life on the biggest stage I'd ever seen. I think my best performance as a Blue Devil came in the fall of my senior year, when I shot a two-day total of 140 (70-70) at Transylvania. My teammate Ethan Schmitz also shot 70-70 and we won that tournament against a very strong field that included a handful of top-ranked teams. (We were however snubbed a national championship bid despite the head-to-head success against those schools!!!)
You mentioned you were a member of the UW-Stout sports information office. What are some of your memories during those years?
Still to this day, I look back at this as my favorite job I've ever had. I looked forward to the football games, hockey games, and basketball doubleheaders as if I was part of the team. As time went on, I developed relationships with all the coaches and a lot of the players and still stay in touch with many of them today.
