If there was ever a “can’t miss kid,” he was it. He was born in the Boston area and took to golf at a young age. His family had money and his dad had power in the world of golf as the chief executive officer of Acushnet, the parent corporation of Titleist Golf and Foot Joy Shoes. He had such promise as a junior golfer that his parents sent him to school in Florida at the IMG Academy run by noted golf instructor and guru David Ledbetter. During his teenage years he was a top-notch golfer who twice was the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) player of the year. Only five boys have won multiple AJGA player of the year awards and two of them are named Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
The “can’t miss kid” parlayed his junior golf success into a college scholarship at NCAA powerhouse Oklahoma State University. He played on a pair of Walker Cup teams for the USA, won the 2010 United States Amateur at Chambers Bay, and was the No. 1- ranked amateur golfer in the world. He failed to defend his title at the 2011 Amateur and he concluded his college career by receiving the Ben Hogan Award as the top collegiate golfer. The “can’t miss kid” decided to turn professional in the autumn of 2011. However, he had a similar experience to that of Curtis Strange and failed to get through qualifying schools on the American PGA Tour and the European Tour. He decided to hone his game overseas.
During the course of the next 10 years, the “can’t miss kid” did miss. He set out onto the mini-tours and the foreign tours. During the course of his first three years as a professional golfer, he played on nine different tours and competed in 32 different countries. He had the money, the background and the history, but that next step of professional golf was more of a miss than a hit. He finally worked his way onto the European Tour and had one successful season. He won the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year award. Yet he couldn’t ever seem to build upon that success. He had a couple of quality starts during the fall season of 2017 at the Puerto Rico Open and the Houston Open and was able to get into Web.com Q School. He won the first qualifying school event and received exempt status on the PGA Tour for the 2017-18 wraparound season. However, he wasn’t able to parlay that into any degree of long-term success.
Sometimes he had a good start and a top-10 finish, but more often than not he faltered. After five years on the PGA Tour, his best finish was a tie for third, and he was a classic bubble boy who was barely inside or outside the top 125. In 10 years as a pro, he won a minor European Tour event in Portugal in 2013, a Web.com event in Columbus, Ohio in 2017, and a Korn Ferry Tour tourney in Las Vegas in 2021. During his first 10 years as a professional, he had total earnings of $9 million. While $9 million sounds like a pretty good number to most of us working class folks, you have to imagine that his expenses were close to astronomical, especially with all the foreign travel.
The “can’t miss kid” is the relatively unknown Peter Uihlein. He is now 33 years old, has played in 11 major championships during his career, and missed the cut in eight of them. Outside of qualifying for the Masters as the result of his U.S. Am win, he has never played in another one. He has missed three cuts in the PGA Championship, has a tie for 44th and a tie for 48th in the British Open, and he has a tie for 44th place in the only U.S. Open that he made the cut. For those of you who don’t know too much about the professional golf career of Peter Uihlein, you are not alone.
Earlier this year, Uihlein made a career decision that has paid off handsomely for him. At a time when the Saudi backed LIV Tour was looking for golfers, Uihlein was willing to take the plunge and joined the new tour. Because of the secrecy of LIV golf, it isn’t known whether he received a bonus to join the tour or not. LIV had passed out millions of signing bonuses to the likes of Phil Mickelson, Cameron Smith, Sergio Garcia and other name golfers, but I suspect that Uihlein didn’t get the big bucks. After all, we’re talking about an upstart tour that also includes aging stars of the past like Graeme McDowell, Pat Perez, Charles Howell III and Ian Poulter as well as total unknowns such as Hennie du Plessus, Travis Smyth, Justin Harding and Yuki Inamori.
Nonetheless, whether the LIV fields are weaker than weak or whether Uihlein has had a sudden growth in his game, hanging out with Greg Norman and Donald Trump has done his bank account a world of good. In the seven individual events on the LIV Tour, Uihlein has pocketed an eye popping $12 million. He has a third-place finish, a second-place finish and another runner-up finish because of a playoff loss to Brooks Koepka at the tournament in Saudi Arabia. True, he has added frequent flier miles on the LIV Tour with tournaments in London, Bangkok, Saudi Arabia and America from the East Coast to the West Coast, yet $12 million is more that he came close to making during a rough and rugged 10 years as a professional.
Is it possible that Peter Uihlein is the real poster boy of the LIV Tour? LIV individual tournaments have been won by the likes of Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith, but other winners include aging former Masters champion Charl Schwartzel and recent Arizona State golfer Eugenio Chacarra. The golfing as well as financial success of the 2022 version of the LIV Tour obviously goes to Dustin Johnson, who earned more than $33 million. Yet when the 48 golfers on your tour include a large number of unknowns and journeymen, then exactly how valid is your tour? Is it mediocre or is it simply below average?
The LIV Tour has announced a 2023 schedule of 14 tournaments. They have thrown out the possibility of LIV “majors.” They will continue to entice golfers because of the money they throw around. Will Patrick Cantlay or Xander Schauffele join? Next year they’ll have combined purses of $405 million. This year’s purses were $255 million and their expenses were estimated to reach $1.3 billion. Finally, it’s worth reproducing the headline from last week’s Miami Herald featuring an article written by golf writer Greg Cote. With regard to last week’s LIV team event at Doral’s Blue Monster in Miami, the headline read, “Pawns chasing Saudi blood money come to Doral as LIV Golf wraps up its inaugural season.” Newspaper accounts are about all we have when it comes to LIV Golf. After all, you still can’t watch it on television.
