How To Pick The Right Tournaments For Your Junior Golfer

All right, what's going on guys? So in this video I'm going to be covering which tournaments your junior golfer should play in if they want to play Division 1 golf based on how old they are. This isn't a one-size-fits-all thing, but this is going to be helping you guys understand. If you got a 10-year-old, it's going to start you guys on the path. If you've got a 16-year-old, again, it's going to point you guys in the direction as far as how you should be thinking about tournaments, which tournaments you should be playing in, which tournaments you might want to avoid, and just kind of making sure that you're selection process, how that factors into ultimately playing Division 1 golf, which is the whole point of this channel. If you're new, if you have a junior golfer who wants to play Division 1 golf, definitely go ahead and subscribe here. If you guys enjoyed this video, please go ahead and leave a like. It really helps push the channel out to, to more people who can learn about this stuff. This is the third video in a 3-video series just kind of covering the overview, kind of like the principles of what I do with my students and how I approach things. So if you you guys are just finding this one, I'd really encourage you guys to go back in this, this playlist series, go watch the first one where I cover how I analyze my students' statistics, and then the second one, how I build out their practice plans based on those statistics and make sure that we have long-term improvement. So this video is just going to be covering the kind of third leg of that stool, which is going to be which tournaments do we play in. Those are kind of the three fundamentals that we're always going to like look at, is just we understand where we're at where we're trying to get to. We need to understand what we need to do specifically in order to accomplish that, how to bridge that gap. And then we also need to understand which tournaments we're going to need to play in. So this video is going to be really helpful for you, especially if you're looking at this and you're just like, I'm playing all these tournaments, or maybe we're not playing in all these tournaments and you don't know what, what you need to do specifically. Um, you know, maybe you feel like you're spending a lot of money, or maybe you feel like you're kind of missing out on this. This video is going to give you a lot of clarity on that process. So let's go ahead and jump right into this here. So what we want to start with foundationally is we need to play in tournaments so that we can be ranked. This is kind of how coaches are going to evaluate players, at least as a sniff test. I understand that, you know, there's gonna be other things that might go into a coach's decision, but to be frank, if you come to a coach and, you know, call it, you know, college golf coach, you're, you know, 17 years old and you're ranked, you know, 1300th in your class, it's like you're not going to go to UCLA. It's not going to happen. You're not probably going to play Division 1 golf. And so this is just a great, you know, first kind of foundation point to really use, um, to your advantage here. Because if you're in a position where, like, let's say your junior golfer— let's just take the absurd, you know, let's say they have a scoring differential of -10— you better believe that, you know, Blades is getting his fair share of, you know, scholarship offers and so on and so forth. So short of, you know, a 2.0 GPA, and even then he's probably gonna have high probability success. So This is what you guys really want to optimize for. All that other stuff like email camps and all that stuff, for the most part, if you don't have the scores, is completely irrelevant. Even if you do have the scores, the scores are going to be enough. So scores, make sure the grades are good, but this is like, you know, the big foundational thing. Um, so let's just go ahead and look at this. So this is the year prior to where a lot of these kids are going to be getting recruited. Um, so this is just kind of like, you know, going to show us what that high caliber looks like. And I'm just going to take an example of one of the students coach through some of this. Um, Matt Hull, uh, he's going to be going to UCLA. Um, he's already committed there, but we're just going to kind of look at his, his kind of profile card here. And so in the prior videos, you've heard me talk about scoring average, specifically in the first video. But it's important to understand how scoring average factors into which tournaments we're playing in. So you're also going to see this number right here, scoring differential. And so scoring differential is really representative of how difficult are the golf courses that you're playing versus whatever you're shooting on average, right? So if you have two players who shoot the same scores on average, but one golf course is significant— one player is playing harder golf courses than the other, then obviously the player playing harder golf courses is the better golfer. And so scoring differential represents that. Hopefully that's fairly straightforward to understand here. So when I talk about improving players' scores I like to aim for them to be in the 72 to 74 range. Now for this player, I really emphasized for him he needed to get under 72 because when we're looking at, you know, initially when we had the conversation, he was really interested in going to Stanford. And so I was telling him that like, if we look at all the other players who go to Stanford, they have scoring averages that are even lower than 72. And so we want to play in really high quality tournaments and we want to have that, that lower scoring average as well, so we're as appealing a prospect as possible. And obviously that worked out. Pretty well for him. So he had, you know, kind of his choices there. But anyway, that's the way to kind of be, you know, looking at this stuff. So when I look at a player and I say, all right, what do we need to do? Do we need to play in harder tournaments? Do we need to lower the scores? It's one of the first things that I'm gonna look at is like, okay, if I improve the scoring average by a shot, it's reasonable, assuming you keep playing in the same type of tournaments, that the scoring differential is going to improve by about a shot roughly. Might even improve by a little bit more than a shot. On the technicality of how scoring differential works. Um, but that, that's kind of like a simple way to look at it, right? And so if I take that and I say, okay, cool, let's say I bring it down to 72, which is the low end of generally what I'm going to coach players to get to, and at that point it's like 0 or like -1 or something like that, and they want to get to a -4 to play like UCLA or, you know, a top program, um, then do we know that there's a gap? And we also know that that gap is not able to be represented by their, their poor scoring average. It's not really the case. So that's where we know we're gonna need to play in harder golf courses. So in this case, we can kind of see, you know, for Matt, which tournaments he was playing in. His average golf course was about, I'd say, roughly 7,000 yards, maybe 6,900 yards. If you kind of have a few of these in here that are like 6,500 yards, and we can kind of see here, I'd say this is maybe on the, maybe a little shorter end, but we'll look at some other players as well. And he's really good in this kind of scoring, he's in a really good spot here. But again, you guys can kind of see some things that I'll kind of like mention, kind of like higher-end tournaments. We've got our AJGA's, and you've got our IMG Junior Worlds, which are excellent. We've got Toyota Cup, which is fantastic if you guys are in California. If you guys are watching this in California, you got a big advantage there. But you can kind of see what that looks like. And we've got, um, you know, the PGA, um, sectional. I think this was a qualifying actually for the Junior PGA, but these are pretty high-level events, challenging golf courses. They're getting ranked, and that's kind of like a fundamental here is we need to make sure that especially once your child is, you know, at a position where they can play in ranked tournaments, that they should be playing in ranked tournaments. But that's how to be thinking through this. Now what you guys can hopefully see here is you see these numbers, that's how many tournaments these players have played. So this player has played in, you know, a good amount of tournaments here. You know, compared to everyone else. He's got a few more local ones, which is part of what's beefing up his numbers. He's played in more events. But if we're trying to just like say purely like profile optimization, I'd probably throw out these, you know, kind of like local stuff here. Even though he won this tournament, you know, even though he did really well on this one, um, overall, because wins in position only has about a 10% impact on overall ranking, you know, I, I wouldn't necessarily play in those. Now I'm not saying— obviously this player's at a very high level, this player's going to go to a very good program. So if you've got unlimited cash like, sure, you know, playing whatever you want. Um, but if you're trying to optimize this and say, hmm, which one should we be playing, which one not, well, I'm probably gonna say, well, let's play in some of these AJGAs and maybe cut out some of the fat here. But I would keep, you know, the Dustin Johnson, I would keep the, uh, the Western Junior, the Ping Invitational. But we could work through a hierarchy kind of of like what are the most elite tournaments. And so that's probably a video for another time, just like listing out all of that stuff as far as which ones are like the best, like majors. Um, actually, let me know in the comments below if you you guys would like me to do a video on that, because I don't want to just like talk at you guys with a bunch of different random topics, because this stuff all goes, you know, super deep. This is obviously something I do with all my students as well, or they don't have to, you know, parse and, you know, read between the lines here. Just tell them, yeah, here are the tournaments to play in. Um, but anyway, this is kind of like what you're going to see from these, you know, more elite level players. Now, this player played in 13, this player only played in 6, right? So again, playing in more tournaments doesn't guarantee better ranking. This player only played 4. Which is the minimum that you need to have a ranking. But again, you're going to kind of see a theme here. This player has a scoring average of 72 to 74, is just under 73, and he's playing on golf courses that are, you know, probably average about 7,100 yards. So it was a little bit more challenging on average than like Matt was in the example that I showed you guys. Um, but again, like, that's kind of what this is gonna, gonna look like. So if you're mapping out your year, it's going to be appropriate for you to look at and be like, okay, cool, we can play in as few as 4 ranked tournaments. Um, we just want to be strategic about like what we're playing in first, you know. Obviously, probably be a better idea— and these are two internationals as well— there's probably gonna be a better idea if you guys are at the point where you're playing AJGAs, you play— try and figure out how you're gonna play in those 5 AJGAs first, then maybe try and figure out like how you're going to play in one of the national majors like the, the IMG Junior Worlds or, you know, the Junior PGA or the, uh, um, yeah, the Junior PGA, the US Junior, those kinds of events. If you have a limited budget and you're trying to play in the best tournaments possible that would be a good place to start. Um, so that's kind of how you guys want to think about this. So as far as, um, getting things started though, the first place you're going to want to go to is tournaments and results and search for tournaments. This should be fairly explanatory, but whatever state you're in, you can just like mark the state. I'll just do California and mark the months. Um, that's really going to help your kind of like organization. Let's say we're in November here, so I want to look at tournaments in November in California in 2024 that are ranked. And I'm going to get this list of all the tournaments that are going to be played in California throughout, you know, the end of this month. So if I was just like, hey, I want to get ranked, you could play this one, this one, um, you probably need a couple other ones. But again, it's relatively straightforward here, um, you know, play in those tournaments and you'll, you'll get ranked. So why is that valuable? Well, it's going to do a few things for you, but most importantly, in my opinion, because it's like at the end of the day, you're not getting recruited until you're getting recruited, right? But if we look back and we say, let's say you're in class of, you know, 2030, well, we are still going to have a scoring differential. We're going to be able to see that number and we're going to be able to see the scoring average, right? And so from that, we can actually say like, all right, how are we performing versus our peers? Which is a good piece of information. Now it also helps us understand like, hey, here's a current scoring differential and we can say, well, where do I want to get to, right? Like what college programs do I want to go to? And so the way that you get that, you go to rankings and honors, college signings. Let's open a new tab here and you can organize this. And this is the same for, for, uh, girls as well. You just like toggle this. You can say, okay, I want to go to, you know, this program. Be like, all right, cool. What, you know, let's say we want to go to UCLA. Let's see if we've even got UCLA. So this is class of— this is class of 2025 here. All right, so I go look at UCLA for class of 2024. All right, scroll down and UCLA, right? Okay, cool. So these two players who are recruited by UCLA, they're ranked somewhere between 75th and, you know, 25th in a class, and they had a scoring differential of, you know, somewhere between, you know, -5.5 and -4, right? So let's say hypothetically you're in class of 2030 and you've got a scoring differential of— or your child has a scoring differential, let's say 3. Well, you can map out and be like, well, we've got this many years until we get recruited, and this is where we're trying to get to. Well, let's just divide that out and say like, all right, we've got to improve by this many shots per year in order to accomplish that goal. That's really the way to look at this. And so those other two videos in the series are really going to help you understand kind of like what do you do with that information, like how do you make that happen. Um, but that is, is how you kind of back this out, is to say like, all right, cool, you know, here's where I'm at right now. The value of getting ranked doesn't matter if you're 10, or if you're, you know, 12 or whatever, it's just, you just want to be able to know like how much do we need to improve by. I want to just be like sticking your head in the dirt and be like, well, you know, I played in my high school team. Like, that sounds good, but it doesn't matter. Um, so you need to be playing in these tournaments. So that's kind of like the starting point. Once you've done that, the way to kind of like work through this afterwards is bring down the scores. We want to get those scores 72, 74 as fast as possible. So the earlier you can do it, the better. Um, obviously, you know, if you're younger, you have more time to accomplish that, but if you are at those scores sooner than later, it benefits you. Once you've got that, we want to be looking at your scores in general. And until you're at about 77 on average, just playing your local stuff, you know, playing the tournaments, um, that you can find here if you can get into them, um, you want to be scoring about 77 on average before your junior golfer makes the jump into like junior all-star stuff. But again, if they can start at 12, you can think about it like this: they're starting at 12, they've got a year or two to burn just to get comfortable with AJGA, you know, Junior All-Star stuff. So, you know, if we can be at 77, we're going to be competitive. It's going to be very easy for us to qualify. And then it also puts us in a position where like 14 comes around, well, we can also start to try and qualify for the Open events, right? We're comfortable with kind of the AJGA scene. Now we can get comfortable with some longer golf courses, right? And so that's really the way for, for you guys to kind of start that progression. So again, backing up here, if you've got a 10-year-old then your first thing would be like, all right, cool, you know, can we shoot scores in tournaments at all? That's kind of like a first litmus test. All these videos are going to be kind of based on the premise that your child is already able to shoot scores. If they don't play in tournaments, get them into tournaments. If you need help bringing their scores down and you're on that younger side and they're just getting started out, there'll be a link below this video. You can learn a little bit more about my process, kind of the blueprint that I lay out for my players. Go ahead and check that out, and then if it makes sense for us to work together it'll kind of like walk you through, you know, what that would look like. But anyway, 10-year-old just getting started, we want to bring those scores down at least to the point where we can start playing in ranked events, so we can hit it far enough so we can play ranked events, we can be competitive. From there, we want to be able to say, all right, how do we get into that kind of 77 range so we can be competitive for, you know, the qualifiers for like the Junior All-Star stuff? That's kind of like that, you know, early level there. Um, Junior All-Stars are great because you're going to be able to earn stars, um, and it's going to put you in a position where you can get in some of the invitationals Environment, right? Once you, you know, are comfortable with that, now you can start looking at AJGA Opens, um, and some of those other kind of like events at that caliber. Um, and this is, you know, obviously oversimplified, you know, we can get a lot more detail here, but I'm trying to give you guys a big picture on this. You kind of get into the AJGA Opens. A lot of people say, oh, I can't qualify for the AJGA Opens, or it's too hard to get in. It's like, probably because your scores are too high. You probably have a scoring average like 80, and it needs to be like 75, probably for an AJGA Open, to be really comfortable with that. Um, that's kind of like the way that you work through that next step, right? So if you're starting at 12, the probability you're going to be able to be comfortably in Opens at 15 is much higher than if you started just playing in AJGA, you know, Junior All-Stars at 14 or 15. It's gonna be a lot harder to make that jump. So, you know, the earlier you guys start, the better. Um, once you've got consistently into those AJGA Opens, then you're pretty much trying to get 5 if you can play in all 5 of your allotted, you know, AJGA Opens, then you're pretty much trying to get your scoring average to like, you know, 72, 73, 74, somewhere in that range. And you want to get exempt status. That's kind of like that next rung in the pyramid, so to speak. Once you have exempt status, then you can start really, you know, being a little bit more strategic about which events that you play in. Um, but even just like exempt status alone, if you're playing in solid tournaments, you got a good scoring average, like there's a high probability you're going to get recruited at a high level. Um, but again, if you're just trying to like play in the top tournaments. If you're, if you're watching this video and you're like, how do I play in the junior players? Well, then you're going to want to have exempt status. You're going to want to play in, you know, the best tournaments that you can, and you make sure you're really optimizing around that. So I'll just kind of show you guys, you know, this most recent class that is starting to get recruited. Let's just take, you know, an example here of a UNC. What tournaments is he playing in? AJGA, AJGA, um, looks like this was a local event in North Carolina. Dustin Johnson, AJGA Jones Cup, big event, AJGA US Junior, Junior Western, Junior Players. So this is a very elite level player, just sub-72 as a scoring average, really high level scoring differential on this. This kid's one of the best players in the country. But I want to give you guys a comprehensive video to show you guys if you're just starting out, how do you get started. You want to get the scores into a range where, you know, they can be competitive and kind of like the, the ranked events. Once you've got those ranked events, we're trying to get that scoring average down. We know our kind of long-term roadmap, and then the way we're going to work through those, we're going to progressively lower the scores and we're going to progressively make the tournaments more difficult, and that's going to result in, you know, long-term progression. So hopefully this makes sense to you guys. If you need help in this process, if you're, you know, starting off, you're like, I don't know if I need help, or if I want my child to be successful first before I get help um, go ahead, reach out. Um, again, I've got the link in the description below. Um, go ahead, look through that. I'll kind of like walk you guys through what my process is when I work with students. But I really encourage you guys, if you're kind of on the fence about like get help now or later, it's like the whole point of getting coaching is that so you can perform at a higher level, right? So if you've got a child, if they're serious, like get them the support. Um, better to have the support early and know that it's either in the cards or not than like wait until they're 16 or in high school or something like that and they're already behind the gun. Um, you know, give them, give them enough time, give them enough runway. It's going to be a lot lower stress for them, much lower likelihood of burning out. Golf doesn't have to be their entire life. Um, but that, that's the progression, um, for you guys. So hopefully this makes sense. Hopefully this is helpful. If it was, um, please go ahead and leave a like. It does push out to more people in the YouTube algorithm. Uh, again, if you're new here, um, and you enjoyed this video, go ahead and subscribe to the channel. Um, we'll be coming out with more stuff like this as well. Um, it's very transparent about like what it actually takes to play Division 1 golf. So, um, I hope this was helpful for you guys, and I'll see you in the next one.