Some 40 years ago the road to success in the world of professional golf was a tenuous one, even for top notch amateurs and college stars. Tom Lehman played college golf at the University of Minnesota and earned his degree in 1982. He immediately turned professional and then floundered for the next decade. He played in Asia and South Africa and was on the ground level during the first year of the Ben Hogan (now Korn Ferry) Tour in 1991. Lehman finally found a home on the PGA Tour in 1992 and four years later he was the circuit’s golfer of the year as well as the British Open champion. By then he was 37 years old.
Tom Lehman was not alone. The top ranked college player in 1975, Curtis Strange, led his Wake Forest golf team to the NCAA championship. He won nine individual titles while in college and was the youngest golfer, at that time, to win the NCAA individual title. Curtis turned pro after his junior year of college but couldn’t get through the PGA Tour’s Q School. He too went overseas, competing on foreign tours in Japan, Asia, and Australia. He struggled with his game, failed Q School for a second time, and finally made his way to the PGA Tour in 1979. Strange won back to back United States Opens in 1988 and 1989 and is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. He was 33 years old when he won his first U.S. Open.
Payne Stewart was a top notch college golfer at Southern Methodist University. He too had a successful amateur career but struggled once he turned pro upon graduation. Like Strange he flunked out of Q School on two occasions following his graduation in 1979. He too headed to Asia and Australia. He had some minor successes in Asia, winning the 1981 Indonesian Open. Perhaps the biggest benefit to his overseas play was meeting his future wife Tracey while playing in Kuala Lumpur in 1980. She was the sister of Australian pro Mike Ferguson. He got through Q School in late 1981 and joined the PGA Tour in 1982. Payne won the 1989 PGA Championship as a 32 year old and followed it up with U.S. Open wins in 1991 and 1999.
It seemed like the top college players of that era took several years to get onto the PGA Tour and then truly didn’t hit their prime until they were a decade removed from college and well into their 30s. Nowadays this is not the case. Over the last few years we’ve marveled at the likes of Tom Kim. Kim turned pro as a 16 year old, won the Panasonic Open India on the Asian Tour as a 17 year old, and qualified into the British Open as an 18 year old. He has won three times on the PGA Tour, was the hero for the International team at last year’s President’s Cup, and turned 21 years of age this past June. Kim is not an aberration.
This past weekend, Ludwig Aberg of Sweden carded scores of 61-61 to storm to a four shot victory at the RSM Classic at Sea Island, Georgia. The RSM was the final tournament of the year on the PGA Tour. Less than one year ago Aberg was in the process of winning a second consecutive Big 12 individual championship while playing collegiate golf for Texas Tech. He turned pro in June and immediately began competing on the DP World European Tour. Some two months into his professional career, Aberg shot a final round 64 to capture the Omega European Masters in Switzerland. As an amateur Ludwig had some success against the pros, winning twice on the Swedish Golf Tour way back in 2020.
Aberg so impressed European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald that he was named as a captain’s pick to Team Euro in the matches that were held this past September in Italy. He had only been a professional for 75 days and yet he found himself part of the game’s biggest stage. He earned two important points for the winning European team and then headed to America to tee it up during the Fed Ex Fall series on the PGA Tour. At the Sanderson Farms Championship in Mississippi in October, Ludwig played rock solid golf and found himself atop the leader board at the conclusion of play with four other pros. American Luke List birdied the first playoff hole to win the Sanderson five-way playoff in sudden death. Last Sunday there was no need for a playoff at the RSM Classic as Aberg ran away with the tournament, beating Mackenzie Hughes by four strokes while shooting an eye-popping -29 under par.
On the other side of the globe, the Japan Golf Tour was holding the Dunlop Phoenix Tournament. The Dunlop Phoenix has always attracted a strong field as evidenced by past modern era champions Tiger Woods, Jumbo Ozaki, Ernie Els, Brooks Koepka, Luke Donald, and Hideki Matsuyama. Yet the Dunlop Phoenix has a history that goes well beyond the Tiger era. First contested in 1972, it was a must-enter for the game’s top players back then. Early past champs included Johnny Miller, Seve Ballesteros, Tom Watson, Craig Stadler, Larry Mize, and Larry Nelson. This year’s field included Hideki, Brooks, reigning U.S. Open champ Wyndham Clark, and Sahith Theegala.
With that high powered field, it was a little bit surprising to see that Japanese amateur golfer Yuta Sugiura would prevail by carding scores of 64-68-69-71 for a 12-under par total and a three stroke margin of victory. Unless you have a tendency to follow the amateur World Golf Rankings, Sugiura might be a name that lacks recognition. He is 11th. Yet he is largely unknown because he attends Keio University in Japan. However he has a stellar golfing reputation. Yuta played in the U.S. Amateur this summer and came in third in the Japan Open.
As an amateur golfer, Yuta was not able to get a piece of the purse at last weekend’s Dunlop Phoenix. However after winning on Sunday, Sugiura announced that his amateur days had come to their conclusion and that he would be turning professional immediately. It’s hard to know whether Yuta will spend the next few years trying to excel on the Japan Tour or whether he will take the big leap forward and try to compete on the DP World Tour and the American PGA Tour. If you can win against Hideki and Brooks, you can probably win anywhere.
A version of this story will continue to recreate itself over the course of the next months and years. It seems as if the latest generation of golfers have a combination of the training, the desire, and most importantly, the ability to excel on golf’s center stage at an age that was hard to fathom back in the days of Curtis Strange, Payne Stewart, and Tom Lehman. True there is a lot of talent out there, but at the same time these younger than young stars have to have the mental toughness to pull this off. Should make for interesting times on the links.
