The summer before eighth grade, Brian Merrill’s grandfather gave him a golf club.

He had his mind set at a young age that baseball was the sport for him, but after he picked up the club he knew he was in love.

From then on a majority of the big moments in Merrill’s life came from the golf course.

He will enter the 2016 USI Athletic Hall of Fame as a result of some of those moments.

Merrill played golf for the university between 1992-96 while working toward a degree in education.

During those years, he was four-time All-GLVC and helped the team reach its first and only NCAA Division II National Championship.

Despite his  success, Merrill said during his playing career he never imagined he would be inducted into the hall of fame.

“When you’re there, you’re living in the moment,” Merrill said. “At least for me, I never thought about 10 to 20 years down the road.”

Merrill said one of his most memorable accomplishments was the team moving on to the Division II championship.

Merrill said he tried to focus on doing the best he could, so it was a shock for him to learn about his induction.

The two-time All-District and two-time Academic All-American was in the middle of a game of phone tag with Athletic Director Jon Mark Hall when his father-in-law broke the news.

Merrill said he woke up to a congratulations text and didn’t  know what it was about. He continued to receive texts and eventually googled it.

Hall said one of the best parts of his job is being able to tell athletes they are inductees into the hall of fame, and Merrill ended up sending him an email basically saying,  “I know what you’re calling me about.”

Hall said Merrill was a player who stood out above the rest.

“He was a key catalyst of some really great men’s golf teams we had,” he said.

Merrill, who is  originally from Boonville, almost didn’t  have a career at the university. He  accepted a scholarship to play golf at Murray State University his freshman year, but said in the end it wasn’t right for him.

“The way I look at it is everything works out for a reason,” Merrill said. “I was looking forward to getting back and getting closer to home.”

At the university, Merrill played under former head coach Jim Brown, who had been a part of university athletics since 1970 and started to coach men’s golf in 1977.

Merrill said Brown’s coaching philosophy worked for him.

Brown never structured practice, Merill said. He gave it to the players to improve as they saw fit. His input came mostly from guidance on what areas he thought they should focus on.

“He was a wonderful coach,” Merrill said, “a wonderful role model.”

Under Brown’s guidance, Merrill also set a season scoring average record of 75.2, a record he still holds. He is also the only USI men’s golfer to play four rounds under 70.

This style of coaching worked for Merrill because he was highly self-motivated.

“I was never a person who needed the kick in the tail so to speak,” he said. “When I focus on something, I’m very motivated to accomplish it or do the best I can at that.”

He said his competitive nature comes from his father, but he feels he got the best mix of his parents.

“My mother is compassionate, caring, one of the sweetest people in the world, and my dad was really not,” he said laughing.

After the initial discovery of the sport Merrill realized he had potential.

When he entered his freshman year of high school if he couldn’t work something around golf he didn’t do it.

One thing he didn’t leave behind was his grades.

Merrill now works  outside his degree area and during his time at the university he said academics was always a focus, but it was a conversation on a golf course that led him to his career.

The offer led him from Evansville to Louisville, Kentucky and now to Birmingham, Alabama, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

He owns a branch of the advertising agency he was first offered a sales job in.

Merrill met his wife while he was still in Evansville and said she has been through all of the moves with him.

“We met through the same guy, his wife did my wife’s and my mother in law’s hair in the same building that he had his company in,” Merrill said. “We kind of got set up that way.”

Now, Merrill said  jokingly, he doesn’t remember his own name after taking his daughters to gymnastics or cheer and being referred to only in reference to his seven and nine-year olds.

Merrill laughed and said the induction ceremony will be fun to show his daughters that “daddy is cool and daddy is pretty good.”