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WHIT TURNBOW College Coach, Leading from the Heart, Surviving and Thriving after Cancer

Call A to Z Entertainment, Inc. today for free information about how to hire or book keynote speaker Whit Turnbow. With over twenty years of successful experience, we are your best agency for booking and hiring professional speaker Whit Turnbow! We book any guest speakers you want in addition to those you see here on our site. We also help you plan your event, so call us today at 888-655-4575 and we’ll be happy to help you.

Whit Turnbow Keynote Speaker:

Whit Turnbow is a winning college golf coach, a cancer survivor, and an excellent guest speaker.

Whit has been speaking for over ten years for corporate conventions, fundraisers, sports teams, coaches conventions, Christian conferences, FCA events, youth camps, and even marriage retreats and church revivals.

Whit Turnbow speaks about: “Being a great teammate, Coaching and leading from the heart, Importance vs. Significance, Survivor-ship, and How Cancer SAVED my life.” Whit is a great speaker for your events because he speaks from his heart and bears his soul to help his audience!

Whit Turnbow Winning Coach and Athletic Director:

Longtime Middle Tennessee golf coach Whit Turnbow stepped down from his head coaching position in August 2015 to be elevated to Senior Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Initiatives and Resource Enhancement.

Whit oversees the revenue generating arms of the athletic department, including the Blue Raider Athletic Association, Blue Raider Sports Properties, marketing and licensing. The Shelbyville, Tennessee, native also has sport oversight of baseball, men’s and women’s tennis, and men’s and women’s golf.

In seven seasons at the helm, Whit Turnbow has led the Middle Tennessee golf program to unprecedented success including six trips to the NCAA Championship, five of those consecutive. Whit Turnbow, a member of Nike’s National Swoosh Advisory Staff, was named the program’s sixth head coach by Director of Athletics Chris Massaro in July 2007.

Turnbow led the Blue Raiders to six NCAA regionals, one NCAA National Championship appearance, a Sun Belt Conference championship, seven straight perfect APR scores of 1,000, been named the league’s coach of the year three times, and guided the program to a No. 25 ranking during Fall 2009. The team also earned the program’s highest ever seed in the 2010 NCAA Regionals at No. 7.

He has also had players win 14 first team all-conference honors, three National Player of the Week awards, and had a player selected to represent the United States at the World University Games. Turnbow also produced the program’s first two-time All-American in Jason Millard, along with having the program’s first-ever major championship participant in Brett Patterson (2011 United States Open).

Middle Tennessee won its first SBC Golf Championship in 2009, weeks after Turnbow’s Blue Raiders shocked the field to win the Callaway Collegiate Match Play Championship.   The Blue Raiders defeated #23 San Diego State in round one, and then knocked off #12 Florida State in the second round, before closing out the championship with a win over #4 Indiana in the finale. Turnbow was named SBC Coach of the Year for the second time in as many years.

Whit Turnbow led Middle Tennessee to a top-40 national ranking and its first-ever at-large berth in an NCAA Regional in 2007-08. Once there, the Blue Raiders advanced to the NCAA Division I National Championships for the first time (as a Division I member) in West Lafayette, Ind. Middle Tennessee continued to make history at the National Championships when the Blue Raiders made the 15-team cut to play on the final day. This finish stands today as the highest team finish in a Division 1 National Championship in the history of MTSU.

Middle Tennessee won a school-record five tournaments under Turnbow in 2007-08, including four straight – also a school record for most consecutive tournament titles. The Blue Raiders were an astounding 142-54 during Turnbow’s debut season. For his efforts, Turnbow was named the Sun Belt Conference and Eaton Golf Pride Southeast Regional Coach of the Year.

Middle Tennessee was named Golfweek’s National Team of the Week three times in 2007-08 and freshman Jason Millard earned All-American honors, while teammates Chas Narramore and Rick Cochran earned All-Sun Belt first-team honors under Turnbow’s tutelage.

Although Whit Turnbow is in his sixth season as head coach, he is no stranger to the program. He was a substantial part of the Middle Tennessee golf program both as a player and assistant coach for nine years – four as a player and five seasons (2002-07) assisting the men’s and women’s programs.

Turnbow replaced legendary coach Johnny Moore, who was in the position 18 seasons and coached Turnbow. Massaro pointed toward Turnbow’s leadership, recruiting ability and maturity when making the decision to elevate him to head coach.

Turnbow’s Blue Raiders turned in a 38-19 mark against a rigorous fall schedule in 2007-08, capturing a team championship at the Jaguar Intercollegiate and finishing fifth out of 17 teams in the fall opener at the Scenic City Invitational. Turnbow’s team came up big in its second tournament under him as a head coach when it shot an astounding 38-under 826 on the way to shattering the previous school record of 853 for best three-round tournament.

Whit was responsible for recruiting each Blue Raider golfer in the program in 2007 when Middle Tennessee fashioned a 115-29-2 record and was ranked among the top 50 nationally in the Golfstat rankings. The 2007 Blue Raiders turned in 10 top-5 finishes including finishing third or higher in the final six tournaments of the spring.

It should come as no surprise that Turnbow is vastly respected by his peers in coaching circles because of his contributions to the development of young talent.

Whit Turnbow was a four-year letter winner as a golfer at Middle Tennessee from 1996 to 2000, and he helped lead the 2000 team to the Ohio Valley Conference Championship and a berth in the NCAA Regional, the first such birth in the Division 1 era.

Following his collegiate playing days, Turnbow spent three years (2000-02) competing professionally. He participated in the Hooters, Hurricane and Developmental Players tours. As a professional, he continues today, to participate in charity outings and celebrity Pro-ams all over the country.

Turnbow was named the TrueTemper/TPGA Assistant Professional Player of the Year in 2001. He was the Professional Champion at the Tennessee Open in 2001 and 2007.

In 2011, Turnbow completed the Sports Management Institute’s Post Graduate Program at the University of North Carolina and the University of Southern California, and was promoted to Assistant Athletic Director. Turnbow was assigned sport supervision of men’s and women’s tennis, in addition to becoming the only member of the coaching staff to be a part of the Athletics Executive Committee.

Turnbow’s experience on the course provides a great deal of assistance and he continues to maintain the winning tradition at Middle Tennessee. Turnbow and his wife, Lori, have a 8-year-old daughter named Reagan, and a 3-year old son, Connor. They reside in Murfreesboro. Lori, the physical education teacher at the Discovery School, is a 2000 graduate of Middle Tennessee. The Turnbows are members of New Vision Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, TN.

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WHIT TURNBOW BY THE NUMBERS:

Total Tournaments Coached: 71

Tournament Wins: 15

Top 5 Finishes: 36

NCAA Championship Appearances: 6

Individual Tournament Champions: 12

All-Americans: 2

First Team All-Sun Belt Conference Players: 14

Sun Belt Conference Players of the Month: 11

Conference USA Players of the Week: 1

National Players of the Week: 3

National Team of the Week: 5

Major Championship Participants: 2, Brett Patterson (2011 U.S. Open Championship) Kent Bulle (2016 U.S. Open Championship)

International Competitors: 1, Jason Millard (2011 World University Games)

Career Academic Performance Rate (2007-2012): 1000(perfect score)

SBC Commissioner’s List (3.5 GPA): 11

SBC Honor Roll (3.0 GPA): 20

All-American Scholars: 6

GCAA Outstanding Academic Team Award (GPA 3.0+): 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13, 2014-15