By Mark Cochran
College sports were traditionally designed for student-athletes to play for four years. This method has now changed. Athletes in many sports now use college as merely a means to get to the professional levels. It is well documented in basketball and now has made its way into the realm of golf.
With the fall season wrapping up, college golf will go on hiatus until spring. The University of Georgia Men’s Golf Team finished their fall season with three top 10 finishes. They look to return to the elite ranks of college golf with the youngest team coach Chris Haack says he has ever had. A lone senior is on the squad while six of the 11 players are freshmen or sophomores. This is not just happening at Georgia. Across the board most Southeastern Conference rosters are comprised of more underclassmen than upperclassmen.
The biggest reason seems to be that more players are starting to join the professional level before finishing school. A lot of players on the PGA Tour are younger than ever. Individuals like Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas both left school after a year or two and immediately started winning.
The catalyst for this change in golf was Tiger Woods.
Golf was forever changed by Tiger. Never before had such a young player been so dominant so fast. He also changed the way golfers train. Before him, very few golfers trained physically with weights or did cardio. They weren’t the athletes they are today. Tiger changed that, and now all the best golfers are physical specimens. They are crushing the ball farther and starting to train at a younger age. This drastically increased the level of play for younger players. And it is showing on the PGA Tour.
“This last year on the PGA Tour there were more wins by guys in their 20s than ever before,” said Ryan Lavner a college golf expert and writer for the Golf Channel. “That’s like a direct result of Tiger.”
These young players have boosted the attraction of golf and continue to move it forward. Over the past 10 years the average age of golfers on the PGA Tour has dropped by over two years. Also the number of players in their 20s has risen by nearly 20 and the number of players in their 30s and 40s has dropped by nearly 20.
It has become a young man’s game, and the way college golf is played is a big reason why.
College teams are playing pro courses. Georgia plays courses like Pebble Beach, Pumpkin Ridge and Crooked Stick. These courses host PGA and Web.com events every year. This is preparing them more for the professional level than ever before.
This is something that has started in the last decade. More eyes have been turned to the college game and these courses are eager to host high profile college tournaments. This has made the move from college to professional more manageable for a lot of young players.
Along with college teams playing professional courses there are also opportunities for the best college golfers to play in actual PGA Tour tournaments. Every sponsor gets a certain number of spots in each PGA tournament that are “free” spots. They can offer than to anyone without that player having to qualify.
In the past this was used for veteran players and former fan favorites to get them in tournaments and give the fans a chance to watch them play. They usually had no chance of winning, it was just for fun. That has changed.
These spots are now being given to young, up-and-coming players to give them a chance to test themselves at the highest level. The best college players are using the summer months to play against professionals and see where they stack up. The ones that do well are usually the ones that choose to turn pro while their stock is at its highest.
“You see a lot of guys who know golf is exactly what they want to do,” said Zach Healy, a senior on Georgia’s golf team. “They get their feet wet in college golf and the [level of] competition for a year or two and then essentially stop wasting their time and go try and make a living from it.”
These younger players are also starting to find success. Rickie Fowler was the first of this new era of players to turn pro early and start to win. Fowler left Oklahoma State University in 2009 after his second year and went on to notch two second-place finishes and one seventh his first season.
This paved the way for Spieth who left the Texas in 2012 at age 19 to join the PGA Tour. He has dominated the game ever since with all eyes turned to him after his win at the 2015 Masters. This has started to make his peers crave that spot.
“All these guys are the same age,” said Henry Persons, former junior player and son of former PGA Tour player Peter Persons. “They played growing with Spieth and they played freshman year with Spieth. And they might not say ‘I’m better than Jordan Spieth’ but they’re like ‘I can play with this guy. He’s winning. He’s already won three majors. Why am I in college?’”
This is driving young players to work harder to get to that next level as quickly as possible. But this level of play does come with a cost.
The consequences of players pushing themselves and working out harder could be making players careers shorter. The added strain of this level of training combined with the hard-hitting style of play golf has become takes a toll on the body. This level of play has not been seen before so more injuries are starting to show themselves in players earlier thus cutting careers short.
Despite the health implications the age of professional golfers seems to be on the decline and one could expect to see more success from these players than ever before.