Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen eager to experience First Coast golf

Coen got a sense of the love First Coast golf fans have for the game during Kentucky’s trip to the 2023 Gator Bowl

• Liam Coen, the new coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, is an avid golfer with a 9 handicap.
• Coen rediscovered his passion for golf after college and enjoys the mental discipline it requires, comparing it to the mindset needed for football.
• He appreciates the strong golf culture in Jacksonville and looks forward to experiencing the local courses.

Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen already knew before taking the job that golf is the second-most important sport on the First Coast after football. 

And he got a taste of that while staying at a golf resort, while in town for a football game — when he was the offensive coordinator at the University of Kentucky in 2023 and the Wildcats were lodges at the Sawgrass Marriott the week of their TaxSlayer Gator Bowl game against Clemson. 

“We got a tour of the TPC Sawgrass [clubhouse], got to buzz around the course on a golf cart, saw all the [Players] champions’ golf clubs … it was awesome,” Coen said during an interview with the Times-Union at the Miller Electric Center on March 10. “You start to connect and communicate with people around here and you can see there’s a passion.” 

Coen has been a bit busy since being hired on Jan. 24, and his golf clubs have stayed in the closet. He had to hit the ground running to get ready for free agency and the draft, and after that will be rookie mini-camp, OTAs and mandatory mini-camp. 

But fans might have spotted him at the Jaguars’ hospitality chalet overlooking the 17th green at The Players Championship or at the first tee on Saturday, where he and his wife Ashley posed with the Gold Man Trophy.

Coen said he can’t wait for a little free time in the summer when he can experience all that the area has to offer — which hopefully includes taking his first shot at the Island Green.

“You hear that there are so many courses, so many good tracks,” Coen said. “Golf is my only other hobby in life. It’s my only other passion.” 

Liam Coen fell out and in love with golf

Coen is a 9-handicap (about the same as former Jaguars coach Doug Pederson, who also was an avid golfer), has two holes-in-one, took a buddy trip to play in Ireland in 2023, and has one planned for this summer to Scotland with father Tim — who was not only his football coach at LaSalle Academy in Providence, R.I., but was the school’s golf coach. 

Coen’s career low is a 75 at the Richmond Country Club in Hope Valley, R.I. He is a public golf guy and loves Donald Ross courses.

Like most golfers, Coen’s father was the first to put a club in his hand. More specifically, it was a Fisher Price set of plastic clubs and balls that he whacked around the backyard in South Kingstown, R.I. 

“A very young age, like 3 or 4,” Coen said of the first time he gripped a club. 

Other sports took priority for Liam Coen

However, golf became frustrating by the time Coen reached 10 years old. He excelled in every team sport he tried but found golf more difficult, and had a hard time comprehending that being a good athlete in other sports doesn’t always translate to golf. 

“We went out and tried playing when I was 10 or 12,” he said. “It didn’t go well. I expected to be good and at the time, I was pretty good in baseball, basketball and football. We went out and played but it wasn’t going great, and I didn’t have a huge passion for golf at the time, so we kind of put it on the shelf for a while.” 

Coen’s golf experiences during his teen years were largely going with his friends to “slap the ball around,” and most of his time was taken up as the starting quarterback for his high school team. Coen was the Rhode Island high school player of the year and then went on to start for four years at UMass. 

Liam Coen renewed his love of golf after college

Coen rediscovered golf and built the passion he said was lacking when he was younger while staying in Amhert, Mass., after he completed his last year for the Minutemen. His backup quarterback at UMass, Scott Woodward, encouraged him to start playing golf and the two began frequenting a nine-hole course. 

The more he played, the more competitive it got between the two quarterbacks. And Coen caught a case of the golf bug that has never been cured. 

Shortly after that he began his coaching career in Providence at Brown and Rhode Island in Kingstown, which led to stops in Maine, Kentucky and Rams and the Tampa Bay Bucs. 

What limited free time a football coach can get was spent on the golf course. 

“I started to find the passion, find the competitiveness and then that just kind of skyrocketed,” he said. “Then you start going on golf trips, playing a bunch of great tracks … and the passion has definitely been refound.” 

What’s the golf scouting report on Liam Coen?

Coen self-scouts himself as an accurate driver of the golf ball and a good iron player. 

“I’m not super-long but I’m in the fairway,” he said. “If I’m playing well it’s because of my first two shots.“ 

His weaknesses are putting and bunker shots. 

“Sand is an issue,” he said. “I’ll do everything and anything to avoid it. But putting is a weakness. It’s actually funny because it’s both my dad’s and my weakness. I’ve tried a lot of different putters over the years and I’ve realized it’s not the arrow, it’s the Indian. I enjoy hitting irons. I enjoy hitting woods. I don’t enjoy putting.” 

Coen said his favorite player is Dustin Johnson, “because he’s an athlete playing golf,” but also follows Rory McIlroy, Shane Lowry and has always tried to emulate Fred Couples’ swing. 

Coen is friends with five-time PGA Tour winner Harris English, whom he met through a connection with his agent, Jack McClendon, who went to high school with English in Chattanooga, Tenn.

English said he hasn’t played golf with Coen yet but is looking forward to having him up to Sea Island for a round.

In the meantime, English, an avid Jaguars fan, is rooting for the team to improve under Coen.

“Obviously, he’s pretty busy right now but I’m looking forward to playing with him some day,” English said. “But I’m really excited about what he can do for the Jaguars and Trevor Lawrence. Look what he did at Tampa Bay in turning Baker Mayfield around and what he did for their run game. I think we can have the same thing for the Jaguars.”

Liam Coen equates golf mentality to football

Coen has already talked some golf with Jaguars who are avid players, such as quarterback Trevor Lawrence and long snapper Ross Matiscik. And he said golf can help a football player from the mental discipline required. 

“It’s the patience it takes, the inner confidence, the self-talk that has to happen for you to either recover from a bad shot or also keep it from going from a confidence level and consistency,” he said. “I think that’s something that we as football coaches can continue to help work on with these players, that inner self-talk and being able to move on from bad plays and move on from bad shots and be able to take the next step, clear the mechanism … next shot mentality.” 

Lawrence can count on that kind of conversation with his new coach. 

“I talk about that all the time with quarterbacks,” he said. “’Hey, next play, next throw. Same thing was with the next [golf] shot. It didn’t matter what just happened, right, wrong or indifferent. Move on to the next one. I think golfers have to have that or they’re not going to be successful.” 

The Jaguars quarterbacks also can expect to get a dose of how the mechanics of a good golf swing and a good pass in football are similar. 

“Very similar … where we talk about having the same type of torque and explosion at the connection point,” he said. 

Coen was planning to watch some shots at The Players on Saturday with the rest of the Jaguars coaches at the team’s hospitality chalet overlooking the 17th hole. He might have gotten a stronger sense of the passion First Coast fans have for the PGA Tour’s flagship event, and golf in general. 

He said he already has an idea. 

“There’s a love for the game of golf out here and that’s obviously exciting for me,” he said.