Cal golf coach Steve Desimone retires after 37 years on job

Longtime Cal men’s golf coach Steve Desimone, who lifted a club program with no funding to varsity status and national prominence in his 37 years at the helm, announced his retirement Saturday morning.

Cal won the national championship under Desimone in 2004, and the Bears also collected a modern-era, NCAA-record 12 tournament victories during the 2012-13 school year.

Desimone, twice named national coach of the year, was an enduring presence atop the program, gregarious and upbeat and always quick to tell a story - occasionally embellished and invariably entertaining.

Desimone played basketball for the Bears as an undergraduate, returned to earn a master’s degree in physical education and later took over the foundering golf program in 1979.

Soon thereafter, he formed the Cal golf committee - a fund-raising arm that became essential to the team’s survival and its return to varsity status in 1982.