I was channel surfing earlier this week and came upon a Golf Channel show entitled “Golf’s Greatest Rounds.” This show featured the 2009 Presidents Cup Matches between Team USA led by captain Freddie Couples and the International Team that had Greg Norman as its leader. I already knew the outcome of the matches. The American team would win handily over the Internationals. However, I focused on watching those matches from a mere eight years ago because they were contested at San Francisco’s Harding Park Golf Course alongside the eastern shores of Lake Merced.
Harding Park is one of those hallowed golfing grounds, having played host to a myriad of important golfing events, including a World Golf Championship, several Schwab Cups, and a PGA Tour event from the 1960s called the Lucky Invitational. I have played Harding 100-plus times, normally as a contestant in the San Francisco City Amateur and USGA Public Links Qualifying. I ended up watching the 2009 matches for another hour or so, just so I could see the majestic beauty of the historic old links at Harding Park.
Yet sometime into the broadcast it occurred to me how dated the 2009 Presidents Cup seemed, even if it did occur less than eight years ago. The American team included such stalwarts as Kenny Perry, Justin Leonard, Lucas Glover, Hunter Mahan, Stewart Cink, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. The International team featured Tim Clark, Ryo Ishikawa, Y.E. Yang, Vijay Singh, Robert Allenby, Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Weir and Ernie Els. Outside of Adam Scott and Zach Johnson, there is the distinct possibility that no one from those 2009 matches will be in the 2017 version of the Presidents Cup when it commences this September in New Jersey.
Which leads us to golf’s new generation of stars. When the Presidents Cup was contested at Harding Park, Rickie Fowler was a freshman at Oklahoma State. Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Daniel Berger, Emiliano Grillo and the rest of golf’s high school class of 2011 were in the first month of their junior year of high school. Although we always talk about the longevity of golfing careers, the profound differences between the Presidents Cup teams of 2009 and the pending 2017 teams on both the American and International fronts proves the point that a new generation of 20-something golfers has taken over the leader boards on the world golf tours.
Last weekend Justin Thomas captured the 99th annual PGA Championship to add his name to the growing number of great young golfers with major titles. It used to be that you played college golf, honed your game on the foreign tours or the mini-tours, got your beak wet on the PGA Tour in your mid- to late-20s, had that first breakthrough win a few years later, and took home a major championship in your golfing prime when you were well into your 30s. Such was the case for Fred Couples, Tom Kite, Davis Love III, Paul Azinger and a host of others. Nowadays there is nothing unique about Thomas winning a major at age 24. He simply joins the likes of Rory McIlory, Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth as major players when it comes to teeing it up in golf’s four grand slam championships. You can tell how much things have changed when the talking heads start declaring 28-year-old Rickie Fowler as the best player to never win a major, a category that used to go to late 30s golfers such as Colin Montgomerie and most recently, Sergio Garcia.
Of course, golf is in a much different place from the time when a young Jack Nicklaus played high school basketball and football. Nowadays kids like Justin Thomas play in tournaments when they’re 7 years old and keep going full force until they find a home atop leader boards on the PGA Tour. The back-to-back major wins by Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas is the first time golfers of that age have accomplished such a feat since Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen matched them in the early 1920s. In some ways, the new world order of professional golf is vaguely reminiscent of what was going on for that generation that came into the game after World War I.
When I started to follow golf on a serious level, Curtis Strange was the model. He was the son of a PGA professional and played collegiately at Wake Forest. He won some important amateur tourneys as a 20-year-old, including the Western Amateur, the North and South, and the NCAAs. However, he couldn’t qualify onto the PGA Tour for two years and ended up going to Asia to keep his game sharp. There were no valid mini-tour experiences such as the Web.com Tour in those days.
Reigning PGA champion Justin Thomas is also the son of a PGA club professional. He first competed as a 7-year-old. He used to stand out in junior tourneys because he wore long pants, even in the hottest weather, earning him the nickname of “the little pro.” Following his sophomore year in high school, he got into the PGA Tour’s 2009 Wyndham Championship, a longtime tour event known in the past as the Greater Greensboro Open. Not only did he get into the Wyndham, but he also made the cut, a most surprising accomplishment for a 16-year-old. He played collegiately at Alabama, won the NCAA title, and won the Haskins Award as the top college golfer following his freshman season.
Unlike Strange, Justin Thomas left college as a 20-year-old, won a Web.com Tour event as a rookie and advanced to the PGA Tour as a 22-year-old. He had seven top-10 finishes and placed 32nd on the money list during his first season on the big tour. His first win came the following year in Kuala Lampur. This season is just his third year on the PGA Tour and he has already defended his win in Malaysia, won the TOC, set scoring records with a 59 and a win in the Hawaiian Open, and now has his first major title. Curtis Strange won his first major, the 1988 U.S. Open, as a 33-year-old. Thomas is just a few months removed from his 24th birthday.
It’s a new world order at the heights of professional golf. This year’s Presidents Cup team on both sides will feature the likes of Spieth, Thomas, Berger, Patrick Reed, Hideki Matsuyama, Jason Day, Si Woo Kim, Jhonny Vegas, and Branden Grace. It’s truly amazing how much of a changing of the guard has occurred in just eight short years. Golfers are winning majors even though they’re not old enough to rent a car. The game is entering a bright new era.
