Photo by: Rice Sports Information
Rice Memories: Tim Pawul
5/7/2020 3:00:00 PM | Men's Golf, Blog
Being from New York, what made you decide to come to Rice?
"I had a successful junior career in New York, but it's not a powerhouse state (for golf). At the time, the head coach Drew Scott identified me and outside of (American Junior Golf Association) events, it was really the first national exposure that I got. When you're trying to get recruited by a school, it's like a job resume, you put it out to the top schools and everyone has their picks. But, the reality is, being born in New York, all you hear about is the Ivy League schools when you think about a top tier education. Going to Brown, Harvard or any of those schools, they are all cold weather. So I knew that I wanted to go to a really good school that was somewhere in the South with a good golf program and that would give me a path to pursue my dream of playing golf professionally. But, if that didn't work out, I wanted a great education to fall back on. That was always important.
When I first sent out my resume, I started to get interest from a number of schools, and Rice was one of them. When I went down for a visit, I remember that my sister had studied abroad in Italy for a semester a few years prior. I was in awe of the architecture in Europe and Italy in particular. When I walked on the campus at Rice, it was not like what I saw in New York. It was beautiful. It was like European architecture. The campus was incredible and it was small. The 50,000-student campus wasn't appealing to me. Rice quickly moved to the top of my list. It was exactly what I was looking for and I'm glad to say it worked out."
Once you arrived at Rice, what was the transition like?
"There was a small adjustment period. Coming from high school to college, things like managing your own bills. I remember one time I got lost driving around River Oaks. This is before GPS was readily available on your phone, so I was trying to use buildings as a reference. I thought I saw a high-rise that looked similar and Coach Scott explained that they're all over Houston. But that was very short-term, making mistakes like that. Otherwise, the transition was fine. The culture in Houston is very much a melting pot. From a cultural standpoint, it's very similar to what I grew up around.
At the end of the day, I was not one of the shining star athletes at Rice. I was always a rotating five guy. I always had to work really hard. When I first came in, I made a lot of swing changes. I had a very strong grip and tried to get it neutral. It was like learning how to walk again. There were some really rough periods there. There was a small stretch of time where I was just putting up some really bad scores. Anyone who has gone through a swing restructuring can appreciate that. But that was a really great time for me as well. Up until that point, I had tied my entire identity around golf. When things started to go south, I had to look at myself in the mirror and see what it would mean for me going forward. I was able to meet different friends. I really dove into school and ultimately got through the end of it built back up to travel (with the team) again. That was a huge thing for me. Even though I didn't win tournaments, the grind was really telling and helpful in my career going forward. It helped me to learn that any adversity that you deal with, you just have to grind through it. It was definitely a helpful experience."
What was Rice like for you from an off-the-course perspective?
"When you're looking at going to school, if you become a professional athlete, more power to you. It's a very small percentage but it's a dream that exciting for everybody. That's why we all chase it. But if you end up going in a different career path, what you learn is that peer group is the most important variable in life, not just school. There's no better peer group than Rice University. I'm not solving the cure for cancer any time soon, but I always worked really hard. I had to work really, really hard to be competitive, not just from a golf perspective but from an academic perspective. I held my own and I'm very proud of that. When I graduated, and even to this day in my career, I outwork everybody. It sticks out easily in the professional world and work ethic is the most recognizable thing in a professional career. In my particular career path, after that first year where GPA, your degree and your school is that initial differentiator, experience is what talks. My management team and I talk about it all the time, hiring is the most difficult thing. The number one variable we all look for is work ethic. Are you hungry and are you willing to grind? That I can attribute to Rice. For the longest time, the norm was to work super hard. The norm was to grind and I'm very grateful for that."
What was your experience playing golf at Rice like?
"Collegiate golf is an amazing privilege. You get to play some of the best courses around Houston on a regular basis. You get to travel the country. Unlike other sports where you're playing inside an arena or stadium, you're playing outside on the coast of California or the East, sometimes internationally. I think traveling with the guys, times in the van going out to practice, the jokes, the nicknames, early morning workouts, as painful as they were sometimes, the stories that come out of that. It's a comradery. I'm married now with a couple of small kids, but when I get on a text string with the guys, it's like going back 10 years with the jokes and the undercutting. It's just a fun and unique thing. Balancing school and golf was always something that was fine for me. The interesting thing about golf is that it's all year round. It's not a fall sport. It's not a spring sport. You do it consistently throughout the year. I always enjoyed that. You have the constant opportunity to go out and improve yourself."
What did it mean to be named a co-captain your Senior year?
"I've always tended to gravitate to leadership positions. That's just my personality. But what I've learned over time is that experience matters a lot. It's not just about how much you care. By the time Michael Whitehead and I were seniors, we were able to kind of set the culture of the team. Before that year, when you have golfers who are ahead of you, you don't have that unanimous voice. They have a little more say and leverage. You keep your mouth shut and that's just how it works and that's fine. But, we were excited. We wanted a culture of inclusion, fun and doing things together off the golf course. Building those friendships and that bond, that was important to us. It didn't mean a whole lot to me personally. It was more of building a culture that we were proud of that yielded some really good friendships."
What have you done since leaving Rice?
"Right now, I'm in a corporate development role with a company called Oil and Gas Council who is headquartered in London. We put on executive level events around the world and we help make introductions for our clients. It's like a match-making brokerage service within in the oil and gas finance industry. When I was a senior at Rice, I interned at a merchant bank. I took a corporate finance class when I was a junior and I fell in love with it. I knew that banking was what I wanted to do since I clearly wasn't going to go pro. I was really probably a semester or two late. A lot of the other students at Rice had started internships that summer. I took the class in the fall so I was a bit late to the game. My GPA was right on the bubble. It was around a 3.4 or 3.5, which was what the submission had to be for I-Banking roles. I went to a student-athlete career day and Bobby Tudor was there. There was a long line as you can imagine. Once I got up to him, I told him that I wasn't going to beg for a job, but I wanted to work in banking and I felt like I was late to the game. I had sent resumes out but wasn't hearing anything back. I asked him what he would recommend and he told me to knock on doors. If you knock on doors, you'll get in somewhere. There's a late banks. Forget the big ones. He said I just needed experience. That goes back to experience being the more heavily-weighted factor when you look at somebody and the degree and GPA is less important as you go on your career. He told me that I just needed to get in the door. Work for free, get the experience and I would be off and running. I went to a class that afternoon and I Googled 'investment bank Houston.' The first one I clicked on was Corporate Finance Associates, which was based in the Galleria. I emailed them and they got back to me right away in the middle of class. It was a German film class. They wanted me to come in and meet them. I went and they had a lot of respect for Rice. I ended up interning for them for nine months and learned a lot. I got to be a fly on the wall. In a way, I benefitted more in that role instead of a large bank where I would have been one of many. It actually led to a moment that defined the direction of my career. One of the partners asked me to come to his office and just catch up. It was more of a grandfather-grandson type moments. He asked me what I wanted to do in life. At that time I really didn't know. So we were going back-and-forth and he told me that if he had to do it all over again, he wanted an international career. With the way the internet was going, finance was more global. Having a track record in different parts of the world would be not only a great life experience but great for your career. I walked out of that meeting, and I don't know why, but I said that I wanted to live in London. I never thought of that until that moment. But from then on, all I did was think about London, London, London. I talked to Rice alums who lived in London and did everything I could. I ended up getting a job in oil and gas and the month I joined, they joined with an Indian data company and the partner would be based in London. So the month I started, I just knocked on the door of the CEO and asked him about London. The partner was heading over there but didn't have any international contacts because they were all in the United States. I told him that I could set up meetings for him. It involved me getting to the office at 3 a.m. since London was six hours ahead, because they had hired me for a different position. At that point, I was just excited about talking to people in London. I was obsessed at this point. But I got 50 meetings for him in the first month. It allowed me to eventually go to a conference in London where I ended up meeting the CEO of the company I work for today. Over the next three years, I became their international guy. The international career I wanted, I created unconventionally. The CEO gave me a tremendous opportunity to travel the world, including London six-to-eight times a year. I've now been with them for six years. When you reverse engineer everything, Rice is a small school, I worked for a small boutique bank, I worked for a small, private company and now I'm working for another small, private company. That small environment where you can spread your wings, make mistakes but also take ownership with a lot of hard work. It is really what I love and where I thrive. I'm proud to be a Rice Owl and I attribute most of my success to that because it laid the ground work for a lot of the ways I see the world and how I work."
"I had a successful junior career in New York, but it's not a powerhouse state (for golf). At the time, the head coach Drew Scott identified me and outside of (American Junior Golf Association) events, it was really the first national exposure that I got. When you're trying to get recruited by a school, it's like a job resume, you put it out to the top schools and everyone has their picks. But, the reality is, being born in New York, all you hear about is the Ivy League schools when you think about a top tier education. Going to Brown, Harvard or any of those schools, they are all cold weather. So I knew that I wanted to go to a really good school that was somewhere in the South with a good golf program and that would give me a path to pursue my dream of playing golf professionally. But, if that didn't work out, I wanted a great education to fall back on. That was always important.
When I first sent out my resume, I started to get interest from a number of schools, and Rice was one of them. When I went down for a visit, I remember that my sister had studied abroad in Italy for a semester a few years prior. I was in awe of the architecture in Europe and Italy in particular. When I walked on the campus at Rice, it was not like what I saw in New York. It was beautiful. It was like European architecture. The campus was incredible and it was small. The 50,000-student campus wasn't appealing to me. Rice quickly moved to the top of my list. It was exactly what I was looking for and I'm glad to say it worked out."
Once you arrived at Rice, what was the transition like?
"There was a small adjustment period. Coming from high school to college, things like managing your own bills. I remember one time I got lost driving around River Oaks. This is before GPS was readily available on your phone, so I was trying to use buildings as a reference. I thought I saw a high-rise that looked similar and Coach Scott explained that they're all over Houston. But that was very short-term, making mistakes like that. Otherwise, the transition was fine. The culture in Houston is very much a melting pot. From a cultural standpoint, it's very similar to what I grew up around.
At the end of the day, I was not one of the shining star athletes at Rice. I was always a rotating five guy. I always had to work really hard. When I first came in, I made a lot of swing changes. I had a very strong grip and tried to get it neutral. It was like learning how to walk again. There were some really rough periods there. There was a small stretch of time where I was just putting up some really bad scores. Anyone who has gone through a swing restructuring can appreciate that. But that was a really great time for me as well. Up until that point, I had tied my entire identity around golf. When things started to go south, I had to look at myself in the mirror and see what it would mean for me going forward. I was able to meet different friends. I really dove into school and ultimately got through the end of it built back up to travel (with the team) again. That was a huge thing for me. Even though I didn't win tournaments, the grind was really telling and helpful in my career going forward. It helped me to learn that any adversity that you deal with, you just have to grind through it. It was definitely a helpful experience."
What was Rice like for you from an off-the-course perspective?
"When you're looking at going to school, if you become a professional athlete, more power to you. It's a very small percentage but it's a dream that exciting for everybody. That's why we all chase it. But if you end up going in a different career path, what you learn is that peer group is the most important variable in life, not just school. There's no better peer group than Rice University. I'm not solving the cure for cancer any time soon, but I always worked really hard. I had to work really, really hard to be competitive, not just from a golf perspective but from an academic perspective. I held my own and I'm very proud of that. When I graduated, and even to this day in my career, I outwork everybody. It sticks out easily in the professional world and work ethic is the most recognizable thing in a professional career. In my particular career path, after that first year where GPA, your degree and your school is that initial differentiator, experience is what talks. My management team and I talk about it all the time, hiring is the most difficult thing. The number one variable we all look for is work ethic. Are you hungry and are you willing to grind? That I can attribute to Rice. For the longest time, the norm was to work super hard. The norm was to grind and I'm very grateful for that."
What was your experience playing golf at Rice like?
"Collegiate golf is an amazing privilege. You get to play some of the best courses around Houston on a regular basis. You get to travel the country. Unlike other sports where you're playing inside an arena or stadium, you're playing outside on the coast of California or the East, sometimes internationally. I think traveling with the guys, times in the van going out to practice, the jokes, the nicknames, early morning workouts, as painful as they were sometimes, the stories that come out of that. It's a comradery. I'm married now with a couple of small kids, but when I get on a text string with the guys, it's like going back 10 years with the jokes and the undercutting. It's just a fun and unique thing. Balancing school and golf was always something that was fine for me. The interesting thing about golf is that it's all year round. It's not a fall sport. It's not a spring sport. You do it consistently throughout the year. I always enjoyed that. You have the constant opportunity to go out and improve yourself."
What did it mean to be named a co-captain your Senior year?
"I've always tended to gravitate to leadership positions. That's just my personality. But what I've learned over time is that experience matters a lot. It's not just about how much you care. By the time Michael Whitehead and I were seniors, we were able to kind of set the culture of the team. Before that year, when you have golfers who are ahead of you, you don't have that unanimous voice. They have a little more say and leverage. You keep your mouth shut and that's just how it works and that's fine. But, we were excited. We wanted a culture of inclusion, fun and doing things together off the golf course. Building those friendships and that bond, that was important to us. It didn't mean a whole lot to me personally. It was more of building a culture that we were proud of that yielded some really good friendships."
What have you done since leaving Rice?
"Right now, I'm in a corporate development role with a company called Oil and Gas Council who is headquartered in London. We put on executive level events around the world and we help make introductions for our clients. It's like a match-making brokerage service within in the oil and gas finance industry. When I was a senior at Rice, I interned at a merchant bank. I took a corporate finance class when I was a junior and I fell in love with it. I knew that banking was what I wanted to do since I clearly wasn't going to go pro. I was really probably a semester or two late. A lot of the other students at Rice had started internships that summer. I took the class in the fall so I was a bit late to the game. My GPA was right on the bubble. It was around a 3.4 or 3.5, which was what the submission had to be for I-Banking roles. I went to a student-athlete career day and Bobby Tudor was there. There was a long line as you can imagine. Once I got up to him, I told him that I wasn't going to beg for a job, but I wanted to work in banking and I felt like I was late to the game. I had sent resumes out but wasn't hearing anything back. I asked him what he would recommend and he told me to knock on doors. If you knock on doors, you'll get in somewhere. There's a late banks. Forget the big ones. He said I just needed experience. That goes back to experience being the more heavily-weighted factor when you look at somebody and the degree and GPA is less important as you go on your career. He told me that I just needed to get in the door. Work for free, get the experience and I would be off and running. I went to a class that afternoon and I Googled 'investment bank Houston.' The first one I clicked on was Corporate Finance Associates, which was based in the Galleria. I emailed them and they got back to me right away in the middle of class. It was a German film class. They wanted me to come in and meet them. I went and they had a lot of respect for Rice. I ended up interning for them for nine months and learned a lot. I got to be a fly on the wall. In a way, I benefitted more in that role instead of a large bank where I would have been one of many. It actually led to a moment that defined the direction of my career. One of the partners asked me to come to his office and just catch up. It was more of a grandfather-grandson type moments. He asked me what I wanted to do in life. At that time I really didn't know. So we were going back-and-forth and he told me that if he had to do it all over again, he wanted an international career. With the way the internet was going, finance was more global. Having a track record in different parts of the world would be not only a great life experience but great for your career. I walked out of that meeting, and I don't know why, but I said that I wanted to live in London. I never thought of that until that moment. But from then on, all I did was think about London, London, London. I talked to Rice alums who lived in London and did everything I could. I ended up getting a job in oil and gas and the month I joined, they joined with an Indian data company and the partner would be based in London. So the month I started, I just knocked on the door of the CEO and asked him about London. The partner was heading over there but didn't have any international contacts because they were all in the United States. I told him that I could set up meetings for him. It involved me getting to the office at 3 a.m. since London was six hours ahead, because they had hired me for a different position. At that point, I was just excited about talking to people in London. I was obsessed at this point. But I got 50 meetings for him in the first month. It allowed me to eventually go to a conference in London where I ended up meeting the CEO of the company I work for today. Over the next three years, I became their international guy. The international career I wanted, I created unconventionally. The CEO gave me a tremendous opportunity to travel the world, including London six-to-eight times a year. I've now been with them for six years. When you reverse engineer everything, Rice is a small school, I worked for a small boutique bank, I worked for a small, private company and now I'm working for another small, private company. That small environment where you can spread your wings, make mistakes but also take ownership with a lot of hard work. It is really what I love and where I thrive. I'm proud to be a Rice Owl and I attribute most of my success to that because it laid the ground work for a lot of the ways I see the world and how I work."
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