Rob Bennett was named the first head women’s golf coach at Abilene Christian University in July 2022 and enters his third season in 2025-26. He has led the program to a pair of runner-up performances at the Western Athletic Conference Championship through its first two seasons, including an individual conference title by Ryann Honea in 2024. Bennett has steered the Wildcats to a national ranking as high as No. 77 and established them as one of the premier teams in the WAC.
In Year 2 with the Wildcats in 2024-25, Bennett guided the squad to its second runner-up showing at the WAC Championship in as many years. Honea, the highest-ranked golfer in the conference, battled her way to a second-place effort on the individual leaderboard. ACU notched five top-three finishes across the season, each of which came in its final seven tournaments. The Wildcats claimed victory at their first-ever home tournament, the West Texas Classic, and finished in second at the Riverbend Intercollegiate.
Honea was named the Jersey Mike's A Sub Above WAC Women's Golfer of the Week for three consecutive tournaments and tallied six top-five performances over the course of the season. She won a share of the individual title at the BGSU Women's Intercollegiate before winning the West Texas Classic a week later. Honea recorded the lowest-scoring tournament in program history at the WAC Championship with a 6-under 210 effort. She was powered by a 5-under 67-second round, tying Jiyu Han for the lowest-scoring round in program history. Han previously set the mark at the 2023 A-Ga-Ming Invitational.
Bennett found immediate success with the Wildcats, leading them to a title at the program's first-ever tournament in Sept. 2023, the A-Ga-Ming Invitational in Kewadin, Mich. It was the first of three championships for ACU over the course of its inaugural season, as it went on to win the HCU Huskies Intercollegiate in Sugar Land, Texas and the ORU Spring Invitational in Tulsa, Okla. The Wildcats added five more top-two finishes and finished outside of the top five in just one tournament. Runner-up ACU finished just two strokes back of Seattle U at the WAC Championship.
Bennett coached Honea to back-to-back individual crowns at the HCU Huskies Intercollegiate and the Lady Bison Classic in Panama City, Fla. before she won the WAC Championship to earn a spot in the NCAA Regional in Bryan, Texas. She received First Team All-WAC accolades, while Delaney Martin captured second-team recognition with five top-five performances and a title at the BGSU Women's Intercollegiate.
Off the course, four ACU golfers were named All-American Scholars by the Women's Golf Coaches Association (WGCA). Honea, Jiyu Han, Kate Pickrell and Sydney Williams held an overall grade point average of 3.5 or higher while competing in 50% or more of the Wildcats' competitive rounds. Those four, along with Martin and Manon Guille, garnered Academic All-WAC honors.
Bennett, a former assistant for the ACU men’s golf program, spent the 2021-2022 season as the assistant women’s golf coach at the University of Louisville. In his lone season at Louisville, Bennett helped the Cardinals to a program-best ranking of 24th in the country, securing two team victories along the way at the Illini Invitational and Olde Stone Intercollegiate. Bennett played a key role in coaching senior Kendall Griffin throughout the season on her way to being named an All-Atlantic Coast Conference selection at the conclusion of the ACC Championship. The Cardinals also earned a bid to the NCAA Regional tournament, where they narrowly missed advancing to the NCAA National Championship. Bennett helped Louisville excel in the classroom as well, as four Cardinals earned WGCA Academic All-America honors.
Prior to his move to Louisville, Bennett was the assistant men’s golf coach at Abilene Christian from 2018 to 2021. In his three years in Abilene, he helped the Wildcats rise over 60 spots in the national rankings and set new school records for scoring average (288.86), low single-round score (19-under par) and low tournament score (44-under par). The Wildcats posted two tournament victories and eight other top-five finishes during Bennett’s tenure in Texas. Five Wildcats earned All-Conference honors during Bennett’s time at ACU and nine earned GCAA All-America Scholar honors.
Before heading to ACU, Bennett served as the head men's and women's golf coach at Seminole State College in Oklahoma for one semester in the spring of 2018. During that time, he coached two NJCAA Women’s National Championship qualifiers and one NJCAA Men’s National Championship qualifier. He also coached two Academic All-Americans at SSC and won the Mark Laesch Award given by the Golf Coaches Association of America to the coach and team that made the biggest improvement in stroke differential from the previous year.
Prior to Seminole State, Bennett spent four seasons as the head men's and women's coach at St. Gregory's University, where he led both teams to a combined four wins, five runner-up finishes, four third-place finishes and 13 other top-five finishes. He coached one men’s Ping All-Region player, one men’s Sooner Athletic Conference All-Conference player and the runner-up in the 2015-2016 SAC Women’s Freshman of the Year race. He also coached four individual champions and had one graduate play on the PGA Tour Canada. When Bennett began at St. Gregory's, the men were ranked 177th in the country and the women were ranked 134th. Over his four years at SGU, he was able to lead the men to a top ranking of 26th in the nation and the women to a top ranking of 48th.
A native of Stillwater, Okla., Bennett played collegiately at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, where he earned both his bachelor's degree in psychology and his master's degree in community counseling.
Bennett and his wife, Whitney, have been married since June 2012. They have two sons, Royce and Riggs, and a dog, Millie.
