Golf’s post-money generation is here, and they’re terrifying

The PGA Tour has at all times had its share of phenoms. Think Jack, Jordan, Tiger, Rory. But in an period of ultra-high-tech studying, hyper health and, sure, LIV defections, the pattern of younger weapons racking up Tour titles is peaking. Welcome to … Gen Next on the PGA Tour.

IF MONEY IS THE MOST ubiquitous factor in professional golf, then cash video games are an in depth second.

Walk round a Tour cease throughout any early-week follow spherical and you’ll end up besieged by them — big-money matches, skins video games, $10 “dots,” $50 “hammers.” The buddies play for lots; the acquaintances play for somewhat. But everyone performs for one thing. Even the fellows taking part in alone. Like Tom Kim, who’s meandering up the 18th fairway at TPC Sawgrass on Players Championship Monday with a form of convivial swagger and a modest viewers of three—his caddie and your correspondent included.

Kim, stocky and a mere 21 years outdated, is one among golf’s hottest younger stars partially due to that impish bravado. As a 20-year-old member of the International squad on the 2022 Presidents Cup, Kim and his penchant for fist pumps earned raised eyebrows from a closely favored Team U.S.A. But his knack for unseating Americans anticipated to mop the ground with him rapidly alerted the golf world to the truth that the South Korea–born killer was not just like the 20-year-old golfers who got here earlier than him. Not even shut.

“He has the ability to be a global superstar,” Kim’s captain, Trevor Immelman, mentioned then. “I’m a huge, huge fan.”

Two years, a Nike sponsorship, a Netflix Full Swing highlight and a trio of PGA Tour wins later, Kim is each bit a world famous person—and he’s yapping at his new caddie, Paul Tesori, like each bit the overgrown child he is. Tesori, luckily, is just about Old Yeller, a affected person looper whose patchy white beard and mahogany tan are remnants of some many years on Webb Simpson’s bag. Which makes Kim — loud and stout, with a strong construct and beefy calves — a bulldog. Or maybe a pesky corgi.

“Come on!” says Kim, goading his caddie. “You know you want to make it an even $100.”

The two are within the remaining phases of a solo $10 skins recreation. For each birdie Kim makes, Tesori forks over a ten-spot; for each bogey Kim posts, he owes Tesori a tenner. Standing within the 18th fairway, the golfer, who turned professional at age 16, is up $60. But now, staring down his method on Sawgrass’ scary-difficult par-4 finisher, he’s getting grasping.

“Fine,” says Tesori, surrendering to the relentless needling. “We’ll do $100.”

“Oh, man,” Kim says with a devilish grin as he stripes a stunning iron shot that splits the middle of the inexperienced, establishing a 25-foot birdie look. “You shouldn’t have said that.”

MONEY ISN’T WHAT DRIVES TOM KIM. If it have been, he’d have taken a truckload from LIV within the league’s earliest days.

At the time, Kim was an Order of Merit winner on the Asian Tour and LIV had simply secured management of that tour with a $300 million funding. Kim was there, sitting subsequent to Greg Norman, when the deal was consummated. By accepting LIV’s cash, Kim might have stayed near residence, performed typically in Asia and served as an emissary for the worldwide progress of golf that, early on, was mentioned to be central to LIV’s ambitions.

But what Kim longed for was a special taking part in alternative. The raft of veterans who exited the PGA Tour’s higher ranks for LIV cash had cleared the best way for an inflow of recent expertise. Sensing LIV’s risk, the Tour expanded its eligibility necessities and opened pathways to membership for gamers from all over the world.

Kim, then barely older than a teen, heard the decision. He wasn’t alone. As it turned out, near a half dozen hopefuls had equally skilled their consideration on the PGA Tour, and within the two years since LIV’s crash touchdown into golf, this Great Youth Wave has washed over the game with drive — PGA Tour victories, Ryder Cup heroics, main championship moments. This group is youthful, extra numerous, extra distinct and, arguably, extra gifted than any that has entered professional golf earlier than it. Spend sufficient time round them and you’ll begin to marvel if the Great Youth Wave is this good due to their variations.

Take, for instance, the Nordic pairing of Ludvig Aberg and Nicolai Hojgaard. Aberg, a phenom as a teen in his native Sweden, immigrated to the States in 2019, the place he performed 4 years at Texas Tech and grew to become among the many most embellished collegiate golfers of this millennium. Denmark’s Hojgaard took the alternative tack, taking part in for years on the Danish Development Team along with his twin brother Rasmus earlier than advancing by means of the ranks on the DP World Tour.

When the PGA Tour got here calling for each gamers in 2023, Hojgaard, now 23, and Aberg, 24, arrived like thunder and lightning, displaying a dizzying but deeply contrasting array of talent. Aberg’s success got here by advantage of his cyborg-like demeanor and terrifyingly towering ballflight — a 6-iron-wielding Terminator; Hojgaard’s got here due to a wholesome sense of youthful indignance and an artist’s aptitude for the dramatic — assume John Lennon in a polo shirt. Both have been chosen to compete on the Ryder Cup final yr in Rome, the place they starred for the Euros of their blowout win. In the span of simply 12 months, a few of America’s fieriest crew gamers had been vanquished — first on the Presidents Cup (regardless of Team Euro’s loss), then at Marco Simone — by a trio of distinctive worldwide up-and-comers united by a lone widespread battle: the flexibility to develop facial hair. We child, however…

“It’s quite surreal,” admits Aberg with an uncharacteristically sheepish smile. He’s amongst various newbies who’ve gathered early Wednesday morning for the “first-timers” press convention on the Players. “I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that I was watching on TV and cheering [these Tour players] on. Now, I’m actually trying to beat them.”

And succeeding. Four months after turning professional in June 2023, Aberg was a runner-up finisher on the Sanderson Farms Championship. Six weeks later, he notched his first Tour win on the RSM Classic. At the time of the Players he was, stunningly, already the ninth-ranked golfer on the planet.

In 2024, younger bloods proceed on a tear. At the American Express in January, 20-year-old Nick Dunlap grew to become the primary novice to win a PGA Tour occasion in 33 years, reaching a milestone final touched by Phil Mickelson. In March, on the Cognizant Classic, 25-year-old Oklahoma native and former OSU All-American Austin Eckroat held off a area that includes main champs Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry to take the highest prize.

The level isn’t that success has come uncommonly early for these guys — loads of younger golfers have finished that in generations previous, from Nicklaus and Palmer to Woods, Spieth and McIlroy. It’s that no generation has ever seen fairly this a lot expertise emerge fairly so explosively, which raises the query: Why?

No doubt, the LIV defections of the previous few years have cleared PGA Tour leaderboards of some formidable expertise: Rahm, Koepka, Joaquin Niemann, Cam Smith. As Tour commissioner Jay Monahan famous the week of the Players, in mid-March of 2023 the median Official World Golf Ranking of Tour winners early in that season was 16. This season in mid-March, the median rank of winners was 67 (a quantity that dropped considerably after World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler posted back-to-back wins on the Palmer and the Players).

Still, for many years the sport’s high golfers have been steadily getting youthful. In 2000, arguably Tiger Woods’ most dominant season, the then 24-year-old had 9 Tour wins. The common age of a Tour winner that very same yr was 32.19. By the 2014-15 season, when 21-year-old Jordan Spieth was nearly a one-man youth-quake, the typical age of a Tour winner had dropped to 30.54, a quantity that may almost have dipped beneath 30 had 51-year-old winner Davis Love III sat out the Wyndham Championship that yr. This season, by means of the Players in mid-March, the quantity was at 30.78.

Theories abound in regards to the youth motion. The better of them relate to how properly ready these younger studs are. Collegiate golf, extra aggressive than ever, now capabilities nearly as a mini tour. Technology has made upstart golfers savvier and their swings way more technically sound. The give attention to health is at an all-time excessive.

But luck is nonetheless an element too.

“I think I just got hot on the right week,” Dunlap says somewhat shyly. “I think winning at AmEx was a blessing and also …  a bad thing for me. It raised my level of expectation to the highest place, which has been tough. The competition is definitely higher out here than what I’m used to.”

Dunlap’s rationalization means that his expectations weren’t sky-high to start with. His standing as the one golfer apart from Woods to win each the U.S. Junior Amateur (in 2021) and U.S. Amateur (2023) makes that somewhat exhausting to consider.

Paradoxically, uncomfortably excessive expectations could be the driving force of this youth revolution. In a expertise pool wider and deeper than ever, is it doable these youngsters are punching up just a bit extra fiercely than the phenoms who got here earlier than them? And the place, in a sport on the bleeding fringe of innovation, is there any room to punch? Perhaps it’s the one side of the sport the place bodily talent means little.

“These young guys are just very mature,” says Joe Skovron, the longtime caddie to Rickie Fowler who, lately, briefly looped for Kim earlier than shifting to Aberg’s bag full time. “It shows in their keeping calm in all situations — not getting dragged away, having a good perspective on the game, a good perspective when something goes wrong. They’ve got a steady hand.”

Skovron’s level was repeated in so many phrases by each younger participant interviewed for this piece. The differentiator for them, they are saying, is not the flexibility to hit the ball farther or work out tougher however of their capability to deal with the psychological recreation.

“My demeanor is the most consistent thing,” says Eckroat. “My ball striking will come and go, but I can always maintain the same headspace.”

Aberg agrees: “I think I’m pretty good at separating the game from the other stuff.”

“Rasmus and I, we never really had been in a situation where we felt like we needed anyone to help us,” says Nicolai Hojgaard about himself and his pro-golfer bro. “There was always competition, and no matter what we did — it could be grades in school, it could be racing to the car — we were always trying to get an edge.”

This, it appears, is the throughline for golf’s Great Youth Wave. Or no less than the 2024 model of it. They’ve chosen the PGA Tour not particularly for cash, however as a result of they couldn’t think about competing anyplace else. If the generation earlier than them aspired to emulate Tiger’s bulk, physique and size, this generation aspires to clone his mind.

“Everyone can hit the ball close and can putt it and chip it,” says Kim, the proprietor already of 12 world professional wins. “The difference is that here, everyone’s so locked in. In the past, guys were able to get away with not being as sharp mentally. Now, even if you go into Sunday holding a three-shot lead, you’ve got to go out and shoot 67. You realize you can make a huge difference by winning mentally.”

Another technique to put it — which, in a time of painful obsession over cash within the sport, could be a bit unusual in thought — is that these guys are in it much less for the dough than for the competitors and the stakes.

How radical is that?

BACK ON THE 18TH GREEN, the low-budget, practice-round cash recreation has gotten very actual for Tom Kim. 100 bucks and bragging rights are on the road.

Caddies will let you know they study essentially the most about their participant in these moments, which is why they so typically entertain bets with their millionaire companions even when their very own salaries resemble one thing nearer to a center supervisor at an insurance coverage brokerage. Seeing your man make a $50 birdie doesn’t assure he’ll drain a $5 million putt. But seeing how he handles the stress is telling.

“Paul has worked in pro golf for 30 years,” Kim says. “He knows the things that work and the things that don’t.”

To this finish, Kim’s spherical has already been revealing. Asked on a previous tee field about his personal differentiating issue, he slows his roll to assume.

“What have the other guys been telling you?” he asks. I inform him that nobody’s taken this lengthy to reply. He grins.

“I’m good at staying within my own,” he lastly says. “I don’t chase things.”

On the 18th inexperienced, Kim’s self-counsel involves life. He isn’t chasing a birdie; he’s stalking it. He prowls the opening quietly, holding a cautious gaze on the base of the flagstick. His focus lengthens.

The putt is a prayer down a wicked-fast slope and throughout a ridge, and Tesori is laughing as Kim strikes it. But then it’s monitoring … and monitoring … and Tesori’s laughter is rising louder … and Kim is following it to the opening like he already is aware of what’s going to occur subsequent. And that’s the humorous half: He does.

We all do.

You can attain the writer at james.colgan@golf.com.

James Colgan

Golf.com Editor

James Colgan is a information and options editor at GOLF, writing tales for the web site and journal. He manages the Hot Mic, GOLF’s media vertical, and makes use of his on-camera expertise throughout the model’s platforms. Prior to becoming a member of GOLF, James graduated from Syracuse University, throughout which era he was a caddie scholarship recipient (and astute looper) on Long Island, the place he is from. He might be reached at james.colgan@golf.com.