Junior Golf Scoreboard vs Rolex Rankings (Which Is Better For College Recruiting?)

All right, what is going on guys? So in today's video, I'm going to be going over Junior Golf Scoreboard versus Rolex Rankings. Which one is better for college recruiting? So we're going to be digging into the weeds on this, comparing the two, and helping you understand what's going to be best for your junior golfer's specific situation. If you're new to the channel, uh, please subscribe if you want more videos like this where I dig into tournaments improving performance and everything junior golf related, specifically when it comes to helping them develop to play college golf. Now what we're going to be covering in this video today is first things first, like what, what are these? What's Junior Golf Scoreboard? What's AJGA Rolex Rankings? You might have never heard of these before. The next thing we're going to be going over is what's going to be best for your junior golfer. Then we're going to go over how Junior Golf Scoreboard works specifically. Then we're going to go over AJGA Rolex Rankings, how does that work, pros and cons of Junior Golf Scoreboard, pros and cons of Rolex Rankings, and what should your junior golfer do with this information. So first things first, what are these? Well, quite simply, Junior Golf Scoreboard and Rolex Rankings— Rolex Rankings, if you don't already know, is associated with AJGA— they're both just ways that junior golfers are ranked based on the tournaments that they play in. So both of these organizations have tournaments that count, um, they get Rolex points or they get Junior Golf Scoreboard ranking points. Um, and, and that's pretty much it. Not every single event your junior golfer plays in is going to be ranked on these indexes. So it's important to know which tournaments are actually going to be ranked. That way you don't play in a bunch of random events and your junior golfer has maybe the goal of getting in front of college coaches, but they're playing in events that honestly college coaches aren't even going to see their performance in. Those would be things like high school golf, for one-day, like, 18-hole events, uh, stuff like that, you want to make sure that they're, they're playing in ranked events. But that's, that's really, you know, what these two organizations are. They're just different ranking indexes. And so what should your junior golfer do? Like, what should they, you know, what should their goals be? How should they be thinking through this? This really comes down to what are their goals. If their goal is So let's say, you know, just play college golf in general. They hope things that maybe, you know, they work out, maybe they're interested in playing Division III, then Junior Golf Scoreboard is going to be a great place to focus on. And that's pretty much it. That's really all they need to do. They need to shoot decent scores in events that are ranked by Junior Golf Scoreboard. That's pretty much it. So, you know, it's not too crazy. Now, if your junior golfer wants to play Division I golf, then they really need to take the Rolex rankings a little bit more seriously. They need to take AJGA rankings more seriously in those events. And so as we'll kind of see throughout this video, these two ranking indexes kind of play with each other. They work with each other, um, simultaneously. And so it's going to be difficult to get your junior golfers ranking above a certain threshold on Junior Golf Scoreboard if they're not also playing in Rolex, uh, ranking points events. So let's go over Junior Golf Scoreboard really quick. Junior Golf Scoreboard is probably the broadest index of, you know, tournaments that coaches look at. So when they're saying, hey, I need to find more players for my team, or I'm trying to figure out which junior golfers are kind of, you know, the best players in the country, so to speak, then this is really where they're going to be looking. They're going to look at Junior Golf Scoreboard first. And so how does it work? Well, it's fairly straightforward. There are 3 different categories that Junior Golf Scoreboard ranks players based off of, and that's their scoring differential, the strength of tournaments that they're playing in, and how they perform in those tournaments. So let's go ahead and start with the scoring differential first because that's the most important part of Junior Golf Scoreboard. So scoring differential in a nutshell, is your junior golfer's average score minus the course ranking— or the course rating, I should say. So what does that mean? Just a real simple way for you to picture this in your head: if your junior golfer's scoring average is 72 and the average golf course that they play on has a course rating of 70, then they would have a scoring differential of 2. If that were flipped around, maybe they had a scoring average, let's still say, of 72, and they played on an average course rating of 74, then they would have a scoring differential of -2. Now, to be a little bit more nuanced here, scoring differential is based on the top 75% of your junior golfer's rounds. So the bottom 25%, those rounds get thrown out, and it's just based on the top 75%. You could compare that to a handicap, which is only based on the top 20%, which is why your handicap is so much better than your actual scoring average. And so that's the first number that you need to understand if you want to help your junior golfer be successful, is understanding the relationship between their scoring average, which is going to kind of dictate how all those scores come out, and the course rating. So how difficult the golf course is. And that's going to really impact kind of when we talk a little bit later about the Rolex rankings and all of that, because you could have really easy golf courses your junior golfer could play on, and they could play what seems like good golf, you know, maybe they're shooting par or better than par, but it might hurt their actual scoring differential because it's hard to make birdies. And if they're doing it on a golf course with a course rating of 69, it's just going to be really difficult to have a very, very low scoring differential. So the next piece is the strength of the tournament. So how good is the tournament? How, how good are the other players in the tournament? And this is one of those things that it's hard to know ahead of time. There's some kind of easy ways we can figure this out. Obviously, the US Junior is going to be a very difficult tournament. There's going to be a lot of good players in it. At the same time, if we were to compare that to another tournament, let's say you know, your, your average Hurricane Tour event or Noda Begay event, you know, those are still good events if your junior golf is trying to get experience, but they're not going to be the strongest fields. And so that's something to take into consideration here, but you don't want to put too much weight on that because it's only 25% of their overall ranking. Now this is the part that, that shocks people the most. Only 10% of your ranking is caused by how you perform in tournaments. And that, that's really important to take in and sit on there for a second. Winning a tournament, finishing top 5 or top 10 has very little impact on your Junior Golf Scoreboard ranking. So that's just something that to know up front. Understand that the main things your junior golfer needs to focus on, especially if they want to be successful on Junior Golf Scoreboard, is they need to get their scoring average as low as possible relative to the difficulty of the golf course. That's the trick to this. So I want to have hard golf courses that they play on, and they want to shoot as low scores as possible. If they can do that, it doesn't matter if they finish top 25, top 50, or if they win every event. The most important thing that they're going to be evaluated on is how they're performing relative difficulty of the golf course. All right, so let's go into AJGA Rolex Rankings. AJGA Rolex Rankings is kind of a let's call it the higher tier, you know, like if we're comparing and using analogies to look at rankings, let's call Junior Golf Scoreboard the Toyota Camry of, uh, uh, of rankings, so to speak. Let's call AJGA, Rolex, Randy, more, more Lexus, you know, it's, it's a higher level. Um, they're still kind of in the same category. They're in the same group. But AJGA Rolex is higher quality events. You could— some people would say that they're more expensive events. I don't always know that that's true. I think that's probably because it's looked at as like it's a multi-day event. Sometimes you have to travel for them, so it kind of seems that way. But the Rolex rankings are going to be a compilation of every AJGA event has a certain set number of Rolex points that it has on offer. And then there are also events that are non-AJGA events that still have Rolex points. So an example of that would be the US Junior or the Western, um, Junior or IMG Junior Worlds would all be events that get Rolex points that are not, you know, AJGA events specifically. So how, how does that really work? Well, pretty much the way that Rolex rankings work is your junior golfer earns points based on their performance in these events, right? So it's a little bit different than the Junior Golf Scoreboard. Junior Golf Scoreboard, we're looking at their scoring average and how that compares versus the difficulty of the golf course, versus Rolex Rankings is looking at how your junior golfer finishes in the field of that tournament based on how many points that tournament has available. So I'll give you an example. The average AJGA Open has 40 points available. And so if they finish, if they win the tournament, they'll get 40 points. If they finish second, I don't know this off the top of my head, but I think it's something like they get 24 points. And so if you go to ajga.com, you go to Rolex rankings, then you can kind of see over here, this is just, you know, best player in the country right now. This is how many points he's earning per event. And so the way this kind of ends up working out is you have the number of points you have in total, and then that's divided by the number of events you play in. And there's a minimum divisor of 6. So if your junior golfer plays in, let's say, 3 AJGA events, they're still going to have their, their divisor, um, being 6. So that's 5 AJGA events and 1 non-AJGA event. So you can only play in 5 AJGA Opens, you can only play in 4 Junior All-Star events. You can only play in one preview that you're exempted into. Um, and on the other side of this though, you can play in an unlimited number of invitationals. So this is kind of another feature of how Rolex rankings works is it's very top-heavy, so it gets easier and easier to do better in it. It's just hard to break in, it's hard to get into some of the bigger events. So that's kind of where, where the two, uh, are a little bit different there. Now once you can play in more than 6 events, then you'll be divided by the number of events that you play in. But if your junior golfer is trying to optimize their, their Rolex ranking, if they're only playing in 3 AJGA events, they're just— they're not really taking that ranking that seriously. If they're playing in a minimum of 6 though, or 7 or 8, now they're in a position where they can, they can actually, you know, optimize that ranking and be ranked as well as possible. So that's kind of how AJGA rankings work. So what are the pros and, and the cons of these? Well, let's start with Junior Golf Scoreboard. The pros are that it's very easy to get ranked on Junior Golf Scoreboard. You only need to play in 4 events. You just go to their website, look up events, you know, ranked by Junior Golf Scoreboard in your state, um, and it's going to be really easy to fill up a schedule of Junior Golf Scoreboard events, um, that's going to help your junior golfer and, and you understand how they fare up versus the other players in their class and just kind of see like where are they at. Um, it's, it's really great as far as a measurement for your junior golfer on like where they are as compared to like, well, they're the number 1 player on their high school team. It's like, okay, they're, they're the best player, you know, across how many golfers? 100? It's just not— that doesn't tell you that much, especially if their goal is to play Division 1, which is literally harder to do than get into Harvard. So if their goals are to play, you know, college golf, only 3%, 4% of golfers are going to do that. Even at the Division III level, it's important to understand just like how they stack up against other players, not to, you know, compare them in some sense of, oh, you should be here, you should be here, but just to give them a reality check of just like, okay, here's where we're at, here's where we're trying to get to, and here's how much time we have. Junior Golf Scoreboard is super helpful for that. It's really, really amazing. Cons: if your junior golfer just focuses on junior golf score, what if they never play a single, um, Brooks Ranking events or any of these like bigger events like US Junior, IMG Junior World, etc., etc.? Then it's going to be really difficult for them to get their scoring differential low enough. So your junior golfer could have a scoring average of, let's say, 70, which is incredible, Like most players who want to play Division 1 golf are going to be like 72, 74 scoring average. And so they could have a scoring average of 70, but if they're playing on a bunch of golf courses, of course, rating of like 70 or 69 or 71, which is very easy to happen if you're just playing like local events and you're not really paying attention to any of this stuff, then, you know, they have a scoring differential of 0. And, you know, they can play Division 3 with a scoring differential of 0, no problem, which is why I said that at the beginning. But if they want to play Division 1, there has to be a little bit more that goes into it. Now, AJGA Rolex rankings— what were the pros? The golf courses are really hard. It's, it's a very high-caliber field. So when we look back at Junior Golf Scoreboard and say, how do we get, you know, our ranking as well as possible? Well, we're playing on hard golf courses, check. We're playing in really difficult fields, check. And you know, that's a really good thing. And the events that they play in— usually if we look at Junior Golf Scoreboard, the best players on Junior Golf Scoreboard are the best players on the Rolex Rankings. And those two kind of play together because the reality is you can't really just go and find a random Hurricane Tour event, the course rating is 76. But you can, you know, like if your junior golf was playing in the AJGA Invitationals or the top AJGA Opens, you can find golf courses that have course rating 76. And if they go out there and shoot 74 or 75, well, that's going to go pretty well for them. If they go up and fire 69 or 67 or 65, well, now they're doing a lot of good stuff for, for their scoring differential. And they could just focus on playing high-level golf and they can play the exact same level of golf. But, you know, if they're playing a golf course, it's, you know, 6,900 yards, or I'm sorry, a course rating of 6,900 or 6,900, but you know, it's short, the greens are bumpy, it's kind of wonky, it's weird. The rough's weird, ball pops out weird. You know, they might still play okay, um, or they might play decent solid golf, but it's just not going to look nearly as good. Now, what are the cons? If you're watching this video, you're probably already a little bit familiar with the cons. It's hard to get into the events. It really is. You have to already have a certain level of golf that you're performing at. So if your golfer's best score in tournaments is a 75 or a 77, they're probably not going to be able to get into a lot of AJGA events and have much success. They need to have, you know, already developed some experience. They need to be comfortable in competition in order to be successful in AJGA and Rolex-style events. So this is definitely a more advanced player. But at the same time, if they want to go on and play Division 1 golf, it's like, that's kind of what they need to do, is they need to be one of the best players in the country. That's just— there's no getting around that. And so that's really the downside, is there's not as many opportunities to get ranked And you, you know, it's a little bit, it's a little bit like the kind of M&M thing. I was just like, you know, this is your shot. Like, don't blow it. And so it's important to have time to work through that. That's one of the reasons I always recommend junior golfers start as early as possible. So they have opportunities to screw up and they don't feel so much pressure because they just go out there and be like, you know, just getting experience. I screw it up. It's no big deal. Now here's kind of how these things should actually work together. I've kind of presented them as, you know, this or that, but that's not really the answer. If playing D3, yes, just play your local stuff, get your junior golfer scoring average as low as possible, and, and just ride it out on that. You don't have to do anything else. But if your junior golfer's goal is playing Division 1, then they need to use both of these, and they need to be intelligent about that. And so they're going to work together. They're not enemies. It's not one or the other, it's both. And so if you can understand that, you can start to make intelligent decisions about here's where we're at, you know, scoring average-wise, here's where we're at scoring differential-wise, we need more difficult golf courses. Okay, it's appropriate to make that jump here, you know, it's appropriate to make that jump at this time. So these two things should work together rather than being one or the other. And that— so what should your junior golfer do, um, now with this information? It's important to understand where they are. You If you don't understand exactly where your junior golfer is at, you can't say, here's what their scoring average is. Here's the level of golf courses they're playing at. Here's the average distance. Here's what their ranking is. That's step one. So I'd really recommend going over to Junior Golf Scoreboard, looking at their tournament section and picking out some events, picking out 4 events over the next couple months that will get your junior golfer ranked so they can look at their scoring differential and say, okay, cool, I'm here. And then say, well, what are their goals? Where do they want to get to? There's a page you can go to on Junior Golf Scoreboard again that— and I have other videos on this and I'll even link it in the description— but go to the website and say like, well, what are their goals? What type of program do they want to go to? And what's the scoring differential required for that type of program? You know, if it's 0, then they can probably get by with just staying there. But if it's -3 or -4, -5, you know, etc., then they probably need to play in those AJGA events. Regardless, the Junior Golf Scoreboard is going to be a great place to start because they're going to get ranked, and then you can start to make those decisions after that. And you're tracking their numbers. It's really important to actually use that as the core metric for, for your junior golfer and their performance. A lot of the time parents get kind of focused in on how they finished in tournaments, um, or, or how they're doing versus other kids that they know, and, and that's not really a good way to evaluate your child. You want to evaluate their game and their performance based on what is their scoring average? How difficult are the golf courses? Can we incrementally improve their scoring average over a long period of time? And how much do we need to do that per year to help them accomplish their goals? Can we do it at the level of golf course that they're playing right now? Is that reasonable? Or do we have to make the golf courses harder, most likely, and also continue to improve their level of performance? And then you need to get focused in on exactly which things are causing them or preventing them from improving and focusing on those. So when you have like lessons with your coach, you don't want it to just be like, hey, let's go fix your golf swing. And then hope to God that one day they're just going to shoot 65 all the time. That's not how this goes. You want to be able to figure out what's the exact thing in their game that's holding them back, focus on that, fix it, prove that in, in looking at their numbers. And say, okay, cool, on to the next thing. And then incrementally increase the difficulty of the tournament and then incrementally improve their game. So that's really the process you guys want to apply, um, if you want to help your junior golfer, um, develop, play college golf, and really get the most out of both of these ranking indexes. So hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. Hopefully you learned something. If you did, go ahead and hit the like button. Uh, really helps boost the video up to more people, um, helps the channel since we're still pretty new here. So hope you guys enjoyed it, and I will talk to you guys soon.