Twenty-eight years ago Bill Harvey arrived in Albuquerque, planning to play basketball at the University of New Mexico.

Like most gym rats, he dreamed of playing in the NBA or Europe, after obtaining his degree.

As it turned out, one out of two wasn’t bad. He got that degree.

Bill Harvey tees off, wearing his beloved New York Giants cap.

Harvey, 47, didn’t get along with then-coach Gary Colson and after a season as a hard-working red-shirt and limited playing time in his season of eligibility, Harvey left the team.

Sitting out a season after transferring from Western Georgia College was hard, he said, because “I had played every minute of every game since seventh grade.” He had earned all-city, all-county, all-conference and all-state honors at Hampton Bays High School, averaging 40 points a game as a senior.

In the 1981-82 season, the 6 foot 1 inch guard played an average of 4.3 minutes a game for Colson.

But, he says, “We never saw eye to eye,” he said in a recent interview at Arroyo del Oso Golf Course, where he is a teaching professional.

Funny thing is Harvey said he hated golf when he was growing up in New York. He loved playing baseball and basketball and running track.

But when his Lobo career fizzled, his golf career started to sizzle.

He returned to New York that summer and, with his golf-loving father laid off, he got a job as a caddie, making more than $120 a day, which wasn’t bad money for the 1980s, he said.

Not many people know this, Harvey said, but the late UNM baseball coach, Vince Cappelli, was recruiting him to play baseball for the Lobos. When the hoops days were over, Harvey headed to the diamond.

Unfortunately, walking one evening with his wife-to-be, Harvey slipped and fell about 18 feet and shattered an ankle.

Goodbye, baseball. Hello, golf — once healed after reconstructive surgery.

Helped along by PGA pro Ron Doan of Silver City, a guy Harvey said is arguably the best teaching pro in the state, Harvey became a professional.

“I teach for a living,” he said, and occasionally plays in tournaments. “Ron said it would be very difficult to do both.”

Later this month, Harvey will be one of only two state professionals —Bob May, assistant pro at The Club at Las Campanas in Santa Fe is the state’s other qualifier — to play at Santa Ana and Twin Warriors in the PGA Professionals championships. Harvey has played four times before, making the cut once, before, but now he’s on a “home” course.

“I’m so much better now than I was five years ago,” he says of his golf prowess. Indeed, he’s a three-time Player of the Year in New Mexico,

Twin Warriors, he said, “is absolutely a great course and it’s one of my favorites. I love it and it’s a great venue for this event.”

Santa Ana, he added, is “not as tough. They’ll grow the rough and narrow the fairways.”

Harvey tuned up for the big event by winning the 2009 Nike Matches tournament, holding off May with a 1-up victory in the May 7 championship round.

Harvey outlasted a field of 32 in the championship bracket, which included a stroke-play qualifier on May 5 and then five rounds of match play.

The three-time Sun Country PGA Player of the Year got an early start on this year’s march to his fourth consecutive Player of the Year title.

Although he strayed a bit from striving to put a bigger ball into a larger hole to stroking a smaller ball into a much-smaller hole, Harvey hasn’t left the hardwood.

For the past four seasons, he’s been an assistant to former Cibola standout Gerome Espinosa, the boys head coach at Del Norte High School. Harvey was the boys head coach at Highland from 1996-99, when he had Bobby Newcombe and Mark Walters on the roster.

Newcombe, still regarded as one of the best athletes to come out of Albuquerque, went on to play football at Nebraska.

Walters played basketball for the Lobos and saw action last season playing for the Albuquerque Thunderbirds of the D-League.