Josh Gregory is getting closer to his goal. The SMU men’s golf head coach already has a résumé that draws the envy of many other coaches. He took an underfunded Augusta State team and won back-to-back national championships, the first time any team has pulled off that double dip since Houston did it in almost 30 years ago. Gregory is extremely proud of those teams, as he should be; there are countless teams in every sport that have great talent and/or great seasons but never pull off even a single national championship. Without even the benefit of having an assistant coach, he won consecutive national crowns.

In his third year as head coach at his alma mater, Josh Gregory has guided the SMU Mustangs back to the NCAA Championships (photo by SMU athletics).

But after the 2011 title, Gregory was lured away by then-SMU athletic director Steve Orsini, who asked Gregory to come home, to take over the reins at his alma mater. The chance to develop the program for which he played into a national contender was too much to ignore, and Gregory made the move to Dallas. In just his second season at the helm, Gregory and assistant coach Jason Enloe — his former teammate at SMU — guided the Ponies to a second-place finish in the Conference USA championships. At the NCAA Regional Championship, where the top five teams qualify for a berth in the NCAA championship, the Mustangs finished in sixth place, missing qualification by just three strokes.

Now in their third season guiding the program for which they once played, Gregory, Enloe and their team will not be watching the NCAA Championships as outsiders looking in. The Ponies won the American Athletic Conference championship over three teams ranked above them: then-No. 7 UCF, then-No. 9 Houston and then-No. 30 USF, with sophomore Bryson Dechambeau claiming the league’s individual championship. SMU finished fourth in the NCAA Regional Championship Saturday in San Antonio, earning a berth in this week’s NCAA Championship at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson, Kan.

The tournament opens Friday, with 30 teams and six individual qualifiers competing in 54 holes of stroke play over three days. The top 40 individuals will compete in the final stroke-play round Monday to determine the individual national championship. The eight schools with lowest team scores will compete Tuesday and Wednesday in 54 holes of match play to determine the team national champion.

Gregory is understandably proud of his team’s ascent into national relevance — SMU tees off Friday ranked 28th in the nation in the GolfStat poll — but said the assumption that he is surprised to be playing this late in May would be inaccurate.

“Every year, I go in expecting to go to the NCAAs,” Gregory said. “I was very disappointed with last year’s result, because we were good enough to compete with a lot of the teams that went, and we fell a few shots short at Regionals.

“But this is why I came back to SMU, to get my alma mater back to being a national power. Getting to NCAAs this year has validated that we’re headed in the right direction, and I expect to be there year in and year out. So I’d be lying if I said this was not expected. We have come close a lot — we have had some second- and third-place finishes — but winning the conference championship was huge for our kids’ confidence. I wanted these guys to feel that success. I think that gave us a ton of confidence going into Regionals, and it will help us this week.”

Based on the way his team has played, Gregory is not surprised that his team is getting ready to compete for the NCAA championship. But being in this position in his third season at the helm is a little faster than he expected when he was hired at SMU, and the fact that his team has progressed so quickly has been as gratifying as any success he has enjoyed at any point in his coaching career. Much of the credit, he said, goes to the players he inherited from his predecessor, former SMU head coach Jay Loar.

“I would say we’re a little ahead of the curve,” Gregory said. “I remember talking to (Orsini) when I was hired, and he asked me how long I thought it would take before we could be nationally competitive. I told him four or five years. We had lost Kelly Kraft, who was one of the best players in the nation. We were something like 50th in the nation, and when you take him away, we’re around 80th.

“We were really fortunate to have some kids that first year, guys we got from the last coaching staff, who were really good players, and you could say we ‘coulda shoulda made it’ (to NCAAs) that first year. Honestly, that was my most gratifying year as a coach. Those kids hadn’t had as much success as they wanted, and they really bought in to what we did, and they had a really good year.”

Gregory acknowledged that it might sound absurd to suggest that season in which his new team did not even qualify for the NCAA Championship was more satisfying than the years in which he won national titles at Augusta State, but he didn’t back off the statement.

“I realize it sounds a little asinine to say that,” he said, laughing. “You dream of winning one (NCAA title), and I was fortunate enough to win two. But great players make good coaches great, and I had some great players there, and sometimes when you have really great players, you don’t do much more than get them to their tee times and make sure they sign their scorecards.

“I’ll never replace those years, and I would never want to, but to come back to SMU and rebuild a program is very special. That first year, we were able to take four kids who averaged above 75 (strokes per round) and turn them into 72.5 and 73.5 guys, and that was really gratifying. Those guys laid the foundation for our chances to win championships at SMU.”

If it was the great players who gave Gregory the chance to win those titles at Augusta State, he might well have another already in place in Dechambeau, a sophomore physics major from Clovis, Calif., whose talent and attention to the details of improving his game might be matched only by his list of quirky idiosyncrasies. When the Mustangs arrive at a course on which Dechambeau has not played before, he brings along a carpenter’s level and charts the subtle nuances of the topography of the greens. He uses unusual equipment: in a standard set of irons, club shafts get slightly shorter and the club heads slightly heavier as the number of each iron gets higher, but Dechambeau plays with a modified set in which each of the shafts is the same length and each of the heads weighs the same amount (Gregory said Dechambeau likely is the only college player in the country who plays with such uniform clubs). His vice of choice? Chocolate milk — lots of it.

“I’m always trying to find out what’s going to push me to be the best in the world,” Dechambeau said. “I try to figure it out from a scientific standpoint — anything that will give me that little edge over people. If it saves me one shot per round, eventually that will add up.

“That’s where that kind of stuff came from — I wanted to take a more scientific approach. I’m kind of a ‘science golfer,’ if that makes any sense. Obviously, I still have to play. If I have a flop shot, I still have to flop it. But when I’m reading the greens, if I can figure out that the ball is going to roll a certain distance, that could be the difference in a stroke or two, and that could mean everything.”

Dechambeau said his teammates watch him go through his routine, measuring greens, playing with modified clubs and chugging chocolate milk, but so far, none of them have followed his lead.

“I wish they would, because I think it would help them,” he said, laughing. “But they each have their own way of doing things, and their ways work for them. That’s what makes Coach Gregory such a great coach. He understands and accepts that each golfer is different, and he helps each guy do whatever they need to do to be their best.”

Gregory takes it one step further, suggesting that he and Enloe not only recognize the individual talents and routines of their players, but also assume the role of students, learning from their young teachers.

SMU sophomore Bryson Dechambeau is one of 10 players who will represent the United States at the 2014 Palmer Cup next month in England (photo by SMU athletics).

“I have never coached a kid who believes in his methods more than Bryson does,” Gregory said. “I have (former) players on the PGA tour, the Web.com tour, the European tour and the Challenge tour — the four biggest ones — and I have never had a kid who is into what he is doing as much as Bryson is.

“It’s not for everyone, but he does what he does because he is so competitive. He wants to win. He wanted to win the conference championship, he wants to win NCAA championships. He wants to be the best in the world. He understands his game more than any other kid I have ever been around, so he gets what works for him, and he sticks to it. He doesn’t change. I have probably learned more from him than he has learned from me. He’s making me a better coach. All of these guys are.”

Gregory already boasts an impressive résumé, and Dechambeau — who is 23rd among college players in the latest GolfStat rankings and, curiously, the No. 10 amateur player in the world, was a semifinalist for the Ben Hogan Award (given annually to the nation’s top college player) and was named one of 10 players who will represent the United States against a team of Europeans next month in the Palmer Cup in Surrey, England — is the team’s top player. But to suggest that this year’s Mustangs are an elite coach, a star player and four role players would be grossly inaccurate. The Ponies’ lone senior, Harry Higgs, is the team’s No. 2 player and has three top-five finishes this year. The No. 3 player on the team, sophomore Austin Smotherman, finished fourth at the AAC Championship to join Dechambeau on the all-conference team. All five players — the others being sophomore Ryan Burgess and freshman Andrew Buchanan, all average within three strokes of par or better.

“They understand (Dechambeau) is our go-to guy,” Gregory said. “But trust me — they all want to beat him, because they know that if they beat him, as consistent as he is, we have a really good chance to win.”

Dechambeau usually posts the best score for the Mustangs, but he still is growing into the role of team leader, an area in which Gregory has asked for more from his young star.

“A little bit,” Dechambeau said when asked if being a vocal leader is a difficult role that goes against his personality. “My parents always told me to lead by example. That’s who I am, it’s what I do. When someone watched me, I wouldn’t say too much — I’d show them. So when (Gregory) asked me to become more of a vocal leader … it’s an individual sport, but it’s also a team sport, and I’m getting used to that role.

“(Higgs) is our vocal leader now. He’s the only senior on the team. He is the most experienced guy we have, but he also is the guy who makes everyone laugh, gets everyone going. It’s a good mix, the way we share that (leadership role). Hopefully I’ll be a great leader by the time I’m a senior and we’re winning the NCAA championship.”

Gregory said that the talent of his players makes an effective team in large part because of the way the individual players blend together. He understands that Dechambeau’s quirky behavior is not for everyone, but he also knows he needs his best player to lead the way if the Mustangs are to be successful.

“A lot of golfers — a lot of our guys — are superstitious, but (Dechambeau) is a different cat. He has never had a drink in his life, and he works out as much as anyone — he has to, because he loves that chocolate milk. But he loves to play, he loves to work at his game, and he loves to win. He loves physics as much as he loves golf. He’s truly an individual who cares about this team and this program as much as anybody. He’ll send me pictures of his divot patterns from DAC (the Dallas Athletic Club, where the Mustangs practice) at 8 p.m., so I’ll use that to challenge the other kids: ‘He’s two shots ahead of you, so if you’re not outworking him, how are you going to beat him?’

“I use something I got from (SMU men’s basketball head) Coach (Larry) Brown, who has spent a lot of time with me. I told (Dechambeau) something Coach Brown told me, that whether it’s Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, or Nic Moore and Markus Kennedy, your best players have to be your leaders. When your best players are your leaders, you have a chance to be pretty good. So I have challenged him to be more of a vocal leader. He’s getting better at it, but it’s hard as a sophomore. Harry is more of our vocal leader, but they’re our two best players. The other young kids look up to them, to Bryson because of his results and to Harry because he’s the senior. These are the kinds of kids who have helped change the culture of this program. That was our goal when we got here.”

SMU has won one national championship in men’s golf, in 1954, and had back-to-back top-10 finishes in 1972 and 1973. Since then, the Mustangs’ best finish was their 12th-place finish in 1996, when Gregory and Enloe both were members of the team. He stopped short of citing where he would like his team to finish this weekend or to pick a specific score, but he made no secret of the fact that merely qualifying for the NCAAs does not constitute a satisfactory finish to the season.

“I don’t like to set number goals, but if we play well, once we get into match play (on the final two days of the competition), anything can happen,” Gregory said. “If we handle our emotions, and handle the environment and treat it like any other tournament, we have a chance to do well.

“We are not happy to just be there. You never know how many of these chances we’ll get — hopefully this is the first of about 20 in my career, but you don’t know that, so our goal is not just to get there, but to compete, to have a chance to win. If we handle our emotions and stick to the game plan, we’ll have a chance to win the golf tournament. Whether we win, finish in the top eight. But I expect us to enjoy it, smile a lot and have fun.”

Dechambeau, who counts former SMU legend Payne Stewart among his idols (along with Ben Hogan), echoes his coach’s confidence that there is no reason to believe the Ponies can not compete for a national title this week.

“As a team, I believe we’re talented enough to play with the best,” he said, “and quite honestly, I believe we’re talented enough to win. It all depends on our attitude. The skill set is there, but if our minds aren’t there, we won’t win. If our minds aren’t right, we won’t beat a team like (top-ranked) Alabama, where every player is in the top 100.

“We need to be spot-on with the mental aspect of our game. We need to say, ‘let’s go get this up-and-down,’ instead of getting pissed off if we miss a green. We should have a great chance, once we get into match play, to win. Anyone can win once we get into match play.”