Connor Stirling Peterson explains what actually matters for D1 golf recruiting: scoring differential and tournament strength, not wins. The #2, #3, and #4 ranked players haven't won in a year but stay high with consistent top-5 finishes.
There's 3 main things that go into making up a player's actual ranking. There's the scoring differential, which I'll talk about, the strength of the tournament, which I'll talk about, and the finishing position. Let's talk about finishing position first, because finishing position— everyone thinks it matters a lot, and nothing could really be further from the truth. Within junior golf, where your child finishes, whether they win, top 5, top 10, is almost irrelevant. Almost. Not 100%. Almost irrelevant. So if you were doing any level of calculus for your child about, oh, we need to win this tournament, or we need to finish here, or, you know, we don't want to play in that because that's more— stop. Doesn't matter. I want you to flush that out of your brain, okay? Um, winning LSF doesn't matter. Case in point, second-ranked player in the country has not won a tournament in the last 12 months. Granted, he's come in top 5 3 times. Number 3 player has not won a tournament in the last 12 months. Number 4 player has not won a tournament in the last 12 months. Granted, Miles has won 3 tournaments, so good for him, but it doesn't matter.
