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PROVO — Daniel Summerhays is coming home.
The former BYU golf star and PGA Tour pro was hired back at his alma mater BYU as a volunteer assistant coach Tuesday, where he will help conduct practices and team activities, and assist head coach Bruce Brockbank in other responsibilities.
The Davis County product most recently spent one year as the head coach at Davis High School before resigning his position and an accompanying spot in the classroom. That came while Summerhays was recovering from a handful of offseason surgeries, most notably installing two screws in his foot, while mulling a return to competitive golf via the Korn Ferry Tour.
"Daniel Summerhays was as fine a student-athlete as I've seen in my 30-years at BYU," Brockbank said of the 2007 All-American at BYU. "He was at the top of his class both academically and athletically and will be a great example and mentor for the guys on our team."
After finishing third in his inaugural voyage at the Utah Open last summer, Summerhays told reporters near the No. 18 green at Riverside Country Club — which also happens to be BYU's home course — that he was considering a return to full tour status. He earned an exemption to the final round of Korn Ferry Tour qualifying that would've earned him full status on the tour for the entire 2022 season.
In the final round of Korn Ferry Tour qualifying school Nov. 4-8 in Savannah, Georgia, Summerhays finished tied for 73rd. He also had available to him a medical exemption from the previous season that likely earned him a spot in several tournaments, and he could apply for a veterans' exemption after making a combined 122 cuts on the PGA and Korn Ferry tours in his pro golf career.
Those plans could still be taken up at a later date under the new position. But for now, he'll go back to where it began, to the site where Summerhays played three seasons of college golf before joining the then-Nationwide Tour in 2007. In 39 events with the Cougars, he recorded 27 top-25 finishes, 16 top 10s, 11 top 5s, and a win in the 2007 PING Cougar Classic.
"Daniel has an unmatched work ethic which he applies to everything he does," BYU director of golf Todd Miller said. "He has always been willing to put in extra effort to achieve his goals which I know will rub off on our student athletes."
Summerhays joined his first pro tour after winning the Nationwide Children's Hospital Invitational in 2007 and went on to earn $46,926 in his first professional season while making 10 cuts in the 12 events he played, including four top-225 finishes. The 38-year-old Farmington native earned just short of $9.8 million in career earnings on the PGA Tour.
Summerhays' best finish on the PGA Tour came in July 2012, when he lost to Woody Austin in a sudden-death playoff a the Sanderson Farms Championship. He also finished tied for eighth at the 2016 U.S. Open — when he qualified as the fourth alternate — and was third at the PGA Championship in 2016.
The two-time Utah state amateur champion graduated magna cum laude in the finance program from BYU's esteemed Marriott School of Business in 2008 with a 3.91 GPA, and was inducted into the BYU Athletic Hall of Fame in 2018.
Summerhays and his wife Emily live in Kaysville with their four children, including son Jack who has caddied for his father during the last few years of his professional career on several tours.
