Greg Hansen: Since her hiring, no UA coach has done it better than Laura Ianello

On a hot August day, 2010, the Arizona Board of Regents approved a three-year contract naming Laura Ianello as Arizona’s women’s golf coach, specifying that the $30,000 she earned as the team’s assistant coach would be raised to $65,000.

Do you know how much attention that got? None.

It was the same season, 2010-11, Arizona’s football team would climb to No. 9 in the AP poll and Sean Miller would coach the Wildcats basketball team to the Elite Eight, a buzzer-beater shy of the Final Four.

It was two months after Mike Candrea coached Arizona’s softball team to the championship game of the Women’s College World Series.

Since then, Laura Ianello has turned women’s golf into Arizona’s signature sport.

No, not “signature” in terms of community relevance and tickets sold, but no sport on the UA campus has been as successful since Ianello signed that modest contract in the summer of 2010.

Ianello’s golfers have since played in three “Final Fours” and finished in the NCAA’s top 10 eight times. Ianello is now under contract through 2026, her salary more than doubled since her rookie season, 2010, when, at 31, Ianello almost couldn’t believe her good fortune.

“I never thought in a million years I’d get to be the head coach here,” Ianello was saying Tuesday afternoon, a few days after her young Wildcat team won an NCAA regional in Raleigh, North Carolina, in what was supposed to be a rebuilding season.

“Think about it: I had been an assistant coach for three years and I just loved it. This was a top-10 program, coming off the Pac-10 championship and finishing fifth in the nation. I thought they were going to hire some big name nationally.”

That big name is Laura Ianello, and not just because she was the runner-up at the 2000 U.S. Women’s Amateur.

So much has changed since the summer of 2010. Ianello and her husband, Jeff, now have two young daughters, Natalie, 9, and Joanna, 7.

Beyond that, Arizona’s lineup has completely turned over since winning the 2018 national championship; Ianello will enter the NCAA finals Friday in Scottsdale with Kansas freshman Julia Misemer, Thailand freshman Nena Wongthanavimok, Italian sophomore Carolina Melgrati, French sophomore Lilas Pintheir and Lithuanian senior Gile Bite Starkute, who retiterated Tuesday she will return for the 2023-24 season.

What hasn’t changed is that Ianello still appreciates the journey.

Her voice choked and her eyes filled with tears Tuesday while talking about her young team’s rise to prominence.

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“I have such a sense of gratitude and a sense of appreciation for these women,” she said. “We’re going to get there, and we’re going to do amazing things. I can just feel it. It’s pretty awesome.”

True, Ianello inherited a program built on the legacy of LPGA Tour Hall of Famers Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa, and NCAA championship teams of 1996 and 2000, but she also did so with perhaps the most unsettled day-to-day itinerary of any top-25 program.

For the last decade, Arizona’s “home course” has been what Ianello laughingly refers to as “The Tour de Tucson.” Through the years you could often see Ianello’s championship teams practicing at the modest muni facilities at the Randolph Golf Complex or at some high-brow course on Dove Mountain, and especially at the far-away Sewailo Golf Course at Casino del Sol. Have team will travel.

It’s remarkable that the nomadic Wildcats were able to keep pace with Pac-12 national powers UCLA, USC, Stanford and ASU, all blessed with some of the best facilities in college golf.

That has all changed.

Arizona now practices strictly at the Tucson Country Club, home of its $14 million golf compound. Its vast practice facility opened in April. Ground has been broken for its all-purpose clubhouse, one that will match those at Stanford and ASU and anywhere.

“When you don’t have a home base it can be exhausting,” said Ianello. “Since the facility opened in April, it’s a main reason you’ve seen this team rally and continue to thrive. I don’t think we’ve played our best golf yet.”

Misemer, who finished second at the NCAA regionals and is one of the leading freshman golfers in the country, said she enjoys the UA’s new golf facilities so much that “I don’t want to leave it; I could stay there all day.”

When Ianello was hired 13 years ago, filling a void created when Shelley Haywood left the team in midseason, she was surrounded by a group of long-established and successful Pac-12 coaches.

Those coaches remain. Washington’s Mary Lou Mulflur is in her 40th season in Seattle, Carrie Forsyth is in her 24th year at UCLA, Anne Kelly is in her 26th year at Colorado and Cal’s Nancy McDaniel is in her 28th year with the Bears.

The difference is that Ianello has established herself and become part of that elite group of golf coaches. You get the feeling the best is yet to come.