When Roy Williams plays golf — and North Carolina’s men’s basketball coach plays as much as possible this time of year — he carries his clubs in a Kansas University bag, protecting his sticks with Tar Heel head covers.

The man who is “Tar Heel born and Tar Heel and Jayhawk bred” outwardly shows his love for both institutions, even if some fans don’t understand his split allegiance.

“We pulled in a parking lot at the ACC meetings down in Florida last weekend, and I took my golf bag out and set it on the cart,” Williams said Monday during a rain delay at the KGA Senior Fourball championships at Lawrence Country Club.

“The Florida State AD turned around and looked at Dick Baddour (UNC athletic director) and said, ‘Can’t you get him a North Carolina golf bag?’

“I said, ‘My golf bag is fine. My head covers are fine. If you guys don’t like it, you know what you can do.’ Nobody else said another word about it.”

As he said five weeks ago after departing KU after 15 years for North Carolina, Williams continues to love a pair of rival universities equally, though he’s probably more beloved by fans at UNC than those who feel jilted at KU.

“It’s been very positive there,” Williams said, “but at the same time, you know how corny and fickle I am. If I get 100 letters and 99 are good and one is bad, I worry about the one bad.

“So if somebody from Lawrence, Kansas, says something bad about me, I worry about that as opposed to all the great things people are saying in Chapel Hill. The only thing I’m saying (to Tar Heel fans) is, ‘I hope you still feel that way three years from now.’ Here (to KU fans) I’m saying, ‘Over time I hope everybody will look at it the way I do, 15 great years.”’

Williams hasn’t been basking during his honeymoon in Carolina.

“I do think there’s some excitement there. Even with all that excitement, Steve Robinson (UNC assistant) told me the other day … ‘Coach, you haven’t allowed yourself the time to feel good about what you are doing yet.”’

Williams may never officially celebrate the opportunity to coach at his alma mater, a place he worked under his idol and mentor — Dean Smith — for 10 years.

Former Kansas basketball coach Roy Williams watches his tee shot during the KGA Senior Fourball championships. Williams and partner Scot Buxton were in third place Monday after the first round at Lawrence Country Club.

“There’s never going to be a lot of elation, that kind of thing, because it was such a difficult decision to leave here,” Williams said. “There’s a saying, ‘Life may be understood backward, but it’s got to be lived forward.’ I read that somewhere, so that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Williams and partner Scot Buxton of Lawrence combined to shoot a 2-under-par 70 Monday. They trail the team’s of Bill Toalson/Don Cox and Dick Jensen/Lou Rapolino by two shots.

KU’s former coach said he planned to return to Lawrence from time to time. He’s yet to purchase a house in Chapel Hill, N.C., and won’t put his Alvamar home for sale here until his wife, Wanda, chooses the couple’s dream house in Carolina country.

Williams’ daughter, Kimberly, teaches dance and works at a bank in Lawrence, and has no immediate plans of moving east.

“I am very happy to be back,” Williams said. “I made a commitment to play in this event. I’ve always enjoyed Kansas period, Kansas people and Kansas golf.

“I knew I wanted to come back periodically to see Kimberly anyway. She will stick around. She had just recently signed a new year’s lease on an apartment. That’s another reason I laugh when somebody says something about this having been in the works. I’d have never let my daughter sign a year’s lease if I knew we were going back to Chapel Hill.”

Williams was referring to conspiracy theorists who think Williams and Carolina officials agreed on a contract with several weeks left in the 2002-03 regular season, not just days after KU’s national championship loss to Syracuse.

“Nobody in their right mind could have ever thought North Carolina was going to open up in another three years,” said Williams, who declined an offer to replace UNC coach Bill Guthridge during the summer of 2000.

Three years later, Williams agreed to replace former KU aide Matt Doherty, who resigned under pressure two weeks into the 2003 NCAA Tournament.

“Everybody thought Matt would be there 20 more years, including me,” Williams said. “Saturday night after we beat Arizona (to reach Final Four), I got back home at 3 in the morning and there was a message from Matt on the machine.

Roy Williams, left, lines up a putt with partner Scot Buxton during the KGA Senior Fourball championships. Williams and Buxton were in third place after Monday's first round at Lawrence Country Club.

“The message said, ‘Congratulations. I’m sorry you had the questions and distractions (regarding Doherty being on the verge of being fired), but I think everything is going to be OK.’ That was Saturday night before his resignation on Tuesday. Needless to say, all of it was a shock to me.”

It was a shock to some KU fans Williams would leave KU, considering in July of 2000 he stated at a news conference that he’d finish his career as a Jayhawk.

“Three years ago, when I made the opening statement and said, ‘I’m staying,’ what that meant was, ‘I’m staying at Kansas. I’m not going to North Carolina.’ In my mind, it’s like I’m asking you right now, ‘Are you staying here at the golf course or are you going to dinner tonight?’ If you say you are staying here, it doesn’t mean you are giving up dinner forever.

“Later in the press conference,” Williams added of a media session attended by 20,000 fans at Memorial Stadium, “somebody asked me if that meant I was never going to leave. I said, ‘If we have another press conference like this, it’ll either be for me retiring or me dying,’ and I honestly felt that at that time because I felt North Carolina would never open up and that’s the only job I’d ever consider leaving Kansas for.”

Williams told the Journal-World he received 12 offers from NBA teams in his 15 years at KU.

“I could have had a couple significant other college jobs,” he said, referring to UCLA and others. “There was never any other job I was even going to consider because Kansas meant that much to me.”

¢ 6Sports video: Williams back in town

His job today is to help his team finish as high as possible in this golf tournament, which has a two-man best ball format.

“We are not good enough to win,” Williams said, “but we are good enough to play very well. My problem is I have not played very much.”

He must play as much in possible in May with a heavy slate ahead this summer.

“In June, they have three weeks of camps instead of two like we had here. That takes care of a big portion of June,” Williams said. “July is the recruiting period. We leave Aug. 8 to go with the Olympic team (as Larry Brown’s Team USA assistant). So I will play less golf this year than I’ve ever played.”

Williams also will have an eye on the NBA draft June 25. Departing KU seniors Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich are expected to be chosen in the first round.

“Both will be in the top dozen picks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if either one could sneak up to six, seven, eight or nine,” said Williams, who helped the two Jayhawks select their agents in days after being named Carolina coach. “A lot depends on the unknown. The unknown is always the Europeans. I think those two kids will play the game for a living a long time.”

Fourball results in scoreboard.