The D1 Readiness Test: 5 Signs Your Junior Golfer Is on the Right Path
Connor Stirling Peterson breaks down five performance benchmarks for junior golfers aiming for Division I: penalties under 5%, distance of 280+ yards for boys and 220-240 for girls, greens-in-regulation above 70%, minimal compound errors, and putting efficiency with a 3-putt rate under 5%.
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All right, what's going on guys? In today's video, I'm going to be covering the D1 Readiness Test: 5 Signs Your Junior Golfer Is on the Right Path. So I wanted to make this video for you guys specifically to go over what you guys should be looking for to evaluate, is your child on the right path? If you're new to the channel, um, this is the type of stuff that we talk about every single week. It's all built to help your junior golfer develop to play Division 1 golf. There's not a lot of channels like this. So far as I can see, there's pretty much none that really go into the nitty-gritty details of what it actually takes. There's a lot of stuff out there about emails and camps and a bunch of honestly BS, um, but there's very little stuff out there that actually gives the hard numbers about what it actually takes to play Division 1 golf. And so that's what I try to do with this channel. If you're new, please go ahead and subscribe, helps, you know, push the channel out to have more people see it. And if you enjoy this video specifically, go ahead and leave it a thumbs up. Um, so let's go ahead and jump right into this. So big picture, um, I want to kind of start off with like the main, um, the main stuff that's like, if I could just say take one thing away from this video, this is what it would be. Um, number one, they need to be tracking their stats. If they're not tracking their stats, they're not really serious about accomplishing their goals. Just, just being straight up here, they're just going out there, you know, maybe you got a weekly swing lesson or something like that, just do some random stuff with their swing, you know, trying to hit balls. Hit it really good on the range, go to the golf course, go play in a tournament, be like, oh, why didn't I play as well as I did on the golf course or on the driving range? It's like, it's just not serious. Um, everyone on Earth does that. Um, that's, that's not how you separate yourself and do something that literally only like 1% of players actually accomplish, which is, you know, to play Division 1 golf. It's literally harder than getting into Harvard, right? So if your child never like paid any attention to their GPA and they're like, I want to go to Harvard, you're like, you're an idiot, right? Um, so I just say that aggressively. Um, just because, you know, guys, if you're watching this video and your child's not tracking their stats, like, that's, that's thing number one. You don't need to watch the rest of this thing. Like, they don't even have a baseline to like go through this. So step number one, track their stats. We've got a bunch of videos on, on how to do that specifically. Um, or if you want help, got a program where I coach kids on, you know, all this stuff. So, um, number two, they're aware of their junior golf scoreboard ranking, right? So this is going to be the main ranking index you guys want to be paying attention to. And if you want to accomplish a goal, right, like, again, like going to Harvard, and you know that you have to have meet certain criteria. You have to have a certain GPA, you have to have certain SAT, ACT scores. Well, if you don't know what those are, then how successful are you going to be in accomplishing that? Be like, well, you know, I tried really hard in class. You're like, that's great. If you don't know what that is, like, you're not going to be able to be very successful because you just don't have a clue, right? So you need to know, your child needs to know where they're at. Specifically, what they need to know is their scoring differential. They don't need to so much worry about like where the overall ranking is. Class ranking can be helpful, but it's, it's kind of deceptive until it's really their like sophomore or junior year. That's where it becomes more relevant. But they need to know their scoring differential because that's going to help them determine, okay, you know, let's say UCLA is going to recruit a player with a -4 or -5 scoring differential, and right now your child might be, you know, at a 3 or an 8 or, or whatever the case may be. They're going to have that number, and then they're also going to have the amount of time between now and essentially their junior year. So you can just back out the math, you know, if they're an 8th grader, then they've got 8th grade year, freshman, sophomore, maybe, you know, some amount of junior. So we got 3 to 4 years where we can calculate out, okay, well, how many shots per year do we need to improve in order to accomplish our goals? Um, it's pretty straightforward but really, really important, and you'd be surprised how many people don't do this. Um, if you're watching this video, you probably don't do that. So Um, this is something to, to really be aware of. You guys are serious about that, that's a number that you guys need to have. Um, next one is you need to know which tournaments you're playing in, and you need to make sure that they're actually going to boost your child's ranking. Um, so if they're just playing a bunch of random stuff, then the probability is that they're not positioning themselves very well to play Division 1 golf. They might be positioning themselves okay to play like Division 3 golf. Um, I, I, but I can't tell you how many times I've had students come to me or families come to me and say, hey, You know, how come so-and-so over there isn't as good as I am, but they're getting more attention? And it's like, sometimes it's just because they're playing in better tournaments and they're being more deliberate about the events that they're playing in. So it's like, yeah, you shot some good scores, but you shot it on a golf course that kind of sucks. And it's, it's just doesn't really have that big of an impact or it even hurts your overall ranking. But if you're not aware of that stuff, then you're just gonna go playing a bunch of random stuff and your rankings are gonna get worse, especially if you're a better player. Um, it's just a mistake that you can't afford to make. So you guys need to know, okay, these are the tournaments we're playing in, this is how it's going to build up our ranking, here's what our overall goals are. You need to know that stuff. So that'd be the next piece here. And then the last one, and kind of like the big picture stuff, is they need to have a clear plan every single week for how they're going to get closer to their goal. They're just out there doing a bunch of random stuff. Again, I hammer on this a lot, but if they're just doing random stuff, like, why would they expect that they're going to get better? Right. They have just as high probability of getting worse because they're just doing stuff that they think seems like a good idea at the time, rather than actually being able to measure that with data. So when they make a change, they can actually prove to themselves, hey, you know, we're actually moving in the right direction. And if things start going in the wrong direction, they're able to course correct. If they're actually measuring their stuff and they're doing consistent things on a week-to-week basis, then they're able to make adjustments and be able to improve a lot more consistency with a lot more consistency. I have people tell me all the time, you know, junior golfers tell me all the time, hey, I want to be more consistent. Well, the reason that you don't play more consistently is because you don't play consistently. You don't practice consistently. You do a bunch of random stuff in practice. You're kind of chaotic about when you go out and play, when you go out and practice, and when you play in tournaments. And it's like, of course you're not going to be able to be very consistent because you don't play enough golf and you don't do that in a structured enough way in order to expect, you know, consistent results. So, you know, a lot of the time it's like, okay, we're going to go see a sports psychologist to try and solve that problem. And it's like, Sports psychologists can't do anything about that right now. They're going to say, hey, you know, work on your breathing and all that stuff. Um, you know, golf's not that important. But I, I just, I reject all that. You know, golf, you know, your child would not be as good as they are at golf if they did not care deeply about doing well. So telling them to not care is not going to be a helpful move. But it's about having the overall perspective about what they need to do in order to accomplish that. That's how you kind of alleviate some of those, those concerns and help them build more consistency, is realistic expectations. A lot of that comes from tracking their stats and and then knowing where they need to put that energy when they're upset or when they're like, hey, I want to do better. It's like, well, here's where you need to be more disciplined, here's what you need to do specifically. So I wanted to get that out of the way, the big picture stuff here. But now let's go into a little bit of the fun stuff. Um, just for all you guys who are also wondering, this gets a little bit more into the 5 signs of just kind of benchmarks you guys want to aim for if you're tracking your child's stats to kind of see, okay, here's kind of where we should be at. So let's just start off the tee. Off the tee, there's a couple statistics you want to look for. Number one is they need to be under 5% as far as a penalty rate goes. If you don't— aren't using a stats tool that tracks penalty rate, then get a different stats tool because this is one of the most impactful numbers that they can have. If they're blowing balls out of bounds, you know, 1, 2, 3 balls per round, you know, you're talking about, you know, 4, 6 shots per round they've got just because they couldn't hit their tee shot play. And that tells you a lot about, okay, well, maybe here's how we need to be practicing, or maybe we have some bad theories about how we should be hitting our tee shots, or maybe we need to do a better job of doing our on-course prep work before we play our events because we're being, you know, we're hitting balls into areas that are too tiny, um, or something else, right? You know, we might have to have a conversation with our swing coach to say, hey, whatever we're doing is not working because, you know, this penalty rate is just way, way, way too high. And if you're measuring that over a long period of time, you can say, okay, we're going to do XYZ to fix this. And what a lot— what that allows you to do is, yeah, sure, you might not solve all your problems overnight, but if you know what's at like 7% and then it ticks down to 6 and then it takes down to 5.5 and then it ticks down to 4.7, well then you know you're moving in the right direction and the things are effective. Yeah, you still hit some balls out of bounds, but it's moving in the positive direction versus if you don't track that, you just go out there and be like, well, you know, it was a bad day, I don't want to count that round. Or, you know, yeah, but I was working on my swing, so it doesn't count. It's like, all right, that's cool. When you're in a tournament, you're gonna be pretty pissed off about it. So, uh, hopefully that makes sense for you guys. Sub-5% is really the target. You know, if you're at 1%, it's like getting to zero is probably not super realistic. You might get there eventually, but it's just you're not going to put a lot of brainpower into trying to get there. It's not really that big of a deal. Um, the other side of this coin is you want to maximize distance off the tee. Distance off the tee is massive, especially when we consider playing longer and longer golf courses, which is crucial for being able to play Division 1 golf. We're going to play really long golf courses. For the boys, it's going to be 7,000, 7,200 yards. For the girls, you're probably looking at about 6,000, 6,300-yard golf courses are going to be what you're expected to play. So for boys, you definitely want to be 280+ especially getting into junior year. If you can get to 300, fantastic. Um, you know, for girls, you're probably looking closer to, you know, 220, 240, kind of some being somewhere in that range. You're going to be pretty safe. Um, So that's really what you want to look at as far as off-the-tee metrics. You know, next one, approach. Over 70% greens regulation is really the place you want to be. If your child is hitting more than 70% of their greens, they're going to have a very easy time shooting low scores. They're going to have a very easy time shooting around par because if you just do the math on this, it's like if you're hitting 70% of your greens, that means you're only missing certainly less than 6 greens per round. Let's just say it's roughly 6. Let's say you get up and down twice, right? So you made 4 bogeys, assuming, you know, you do everything else, you know, pretty solidly, right? So you've got 4 bogeys on the card. Let's say you get a couple birdies and that's just kind of like a meh round, like your scrambling is really not that good at all. Like, you're already right around par, like you're a couple over par and you're not really playing that well. So again, it just takes a lot of damage out of play. Um, 70% greens regulation also means on all those holes you didn't hit it out of bounds. Or you didn't hit it in like some terrible situation, didn't hit in the trees, you're able to get yourself on the green with a putt at birdie, um, that, that many times, you know, between, you know, 12 and 13 times. And so that's a very highly correlated statistic with being able to shoot really solid scores that you're going to be able to play Division 1 golf. Um, the next one here, this is a term that I've kind of, um, created for, for the sake of my students and kind of describing their statistics. It's what I call compound errors. Um, you know, Tiger 5 could also kind of like fit in here a little bit. My take on compounders is a little bit different than the Tiger 5, but specifically bogeys on par 5s, it's definitely a no-go. It's just a serious problem because again, when you've got a par 5, you should be able to at least lay up to a number where you can hit a wedge on the green. You should be able to do that reliably. You shouldn't be having par 5s or hitting 50% of greens, um, and, and that wouldn't necessarily necessitating, you know, lots of bogeys. So shouldn't have bogeys on par 5s. Um, doubles, um, double missed greens is kind of the way I would call it because, you know, realistically you're gonna miss some greens. Like, it's just gonna happen. I don't care how good you are, you're gonna miss some greens. That's totally fine. You shouldn't be beating yourself up over that. But you can't miss the green again, right? So if you're going to miss it, miss it in a spot where your third shot's definitely on the green. Because, you know, let's say you miss it short and you can putt it. Well, you probably get that up and down. And, you know, if you miss it short and it's a back pin and you have to chip it back there, it's like, okay, fine. It's like the probability that you get up that up and down, yeah, not as good. You know, if you're 20 yards away or something like that, the lower probability of getting that up and down. It doesn't really matter that much as long as you're in a position where you're not making double, then you're going to be okay, right? So making sure you're hitting the green on your, uh, on your third shot every time, it's really important. No dumb plays from the trees. So this is, you know, hopefully pretty straightforward. But if you hit a ball in the trees, you're not trying to be a hero, you're not trying to sling a hook or a slice around that, you're just pitching out, hit the next shot on the green. And, you know, if you miss that shot, chip it on, you make double, it's like, okay, cool, you hit two bad shots. And it's like, okay, you kind of deserve that, that double. And that's also assuming that you don't get that other shot up and down. So it's like you really had almost three bad shots on that hole. So it's like, okay, yeah, you made double, but like you earned the double. So again, it's just, you know, if you're out of position, just get yourself back into position. Don't, don't add complexity here. So that way when you look back on your round, you can say, well, if I'd just driven it a little bit better, then I would've scored a little bit better. So now when I go into my practice, I know exactly what to do versus if you try and hit the slice around the tree and then you hit the tree and then you pitch off across the green and then it just becomes this mess and be like, oh, I made a 9 cuz all this random stuff happened. It's like, that's great. What are you supposed to do in your practice? Well, I think I need to be better at my mindset. It's like, no, it's just not helpful. Um, so that, that's that. Um, the other one here is 4-putts. Um, you know, when I like to calculate out a player's scoring, I'm looking at 3-putt rate. It's not going to account for 4-putts. Hopefully you're not 4-putting very much, especially if you're trying to play Division 1 golf. Um, so we want to obviously be avoiding those. Putting, next one. Putting is very, very important. Um, 3-putts want to be— we want to be under 5%, right? We're not going to eliminate 3-putts. Saying no 3-putts is not very realistic, but under 5%, so that's less than once per round, is really a good healthy place to be. And a big part of that is going to be having a very high make rate inside 5 feet. The reason for that is when you are hitting a lot of your approach shots, you're going to end up on the green probably somewhere between 20 and 40 yards, or hopefully not 20 and 40 yards, 20 and 40 feet on average. And you're going to roll those putts somewhere inside 10% if you're doing a pretty good job with your lag putting, right? And so that's going to leave you a lot of 2, 3, 4, 5-footers that you're going to have to make. And so if you have a very low make rate from those distances, well, you could be a pretty good lag putter and you just need to get better at your short putts. But in order to play Division 1 golf, you need to be really solid at those short putts in order to keep that, that 3-putt rate low. So that's where I'd say over 95%. You can get more granular with those if you have by-putt distances. But again, 95% is kind of a good benchmark there. Now the last one here that I want to kind of address is birdie conversion rate. Um, you know, when we look at this, there's a lot of statistics that kind of get jumbled into this. You know, if you just looked at, say, you know, how often does a player make birdie, um, because there's a lot of variables that go into this. There's how close did you hit it on average, um, you know, where did you make the putts from, you know, etc., etc. I've found that 10 to 15 feet is very highly correlated with the birdie conversion rate. So if you have a high percentage of makes from that distance, they're going to have a relatively high birdie conversion rate percentage. It's going to be fairly similar because that's just going to represent the number of times where if you've got this big, you know, shot pattern, you're going to hit a certain quantity of shots to about, you know, 10 to 15 feet on average. And so you're gonna see a pretty close kind of mirroring there of— that's going to be very highly correlated with your birdie conversion rate. This is a free little tidbit here, um, 5 to 10 feet is going to be highly correlated with your scrambling rate. So again, if you're very good at putting from 5 to 10 feet, you're typically going to have a better scrambling rate. You're very good from 10 to 15 feet, you're typically going to have a better birdie conversion rate. So if you pair all these things together, that's when you really have the magic. That's when you really have, you know, a player who's— you're gonna have a very good probability of playing Division 1 golf. Because we look at this, we're not hitting balls out of bounds, right? We're under that 5% number. We're hitting it long off the tee, so it gives us a very easy, you know, opportunity to hit the ball on the green consistently. We're able to lay back sometimes if we need to, to still continue to hit the green consistently. So we've got a high greens regulation. We've got opportunities consistently to make birdies. We're pretty good at making those 10 to 15-footers. We're not 3-putting very often, and when we do miss the green, we're, we're not compounding any of those mistakes. So it's like you missed the green, you made bogey, no big deal, like nobody cares. But when you do hit the green, you're going to have consistent opportunities to make birdies, and you're not going to, you're not going to screw it up too badly. So again, it just puts you in a position where you have a high probability of shooting rounds, you know, in the low 70s and even into the 60s, especially when you have a good day where you hit, you know, several shots close, where you get lucky a few times, where you get up and down pretty much every single time just by pure chance. You can just give yourself the opportunity to go out there and shoot a 65 or something like that. So hopefully this video has been helpful for you and just kind of understanding here's what it really takes to play Division 1 golf. Here's kind of like tests that you can kind of apply to your junior golfer and Going back to the big picture stuff, those are really the fundamentals that you guys should be applying for this if you want to help your child play Division 1 golf. Now, if you want help in the specifics, specifics of this, as far as like what drills to do, you know, what stats tool, how to analyze that stuff, you know, all of that, I've got a program that I help students with, with all those things. So there's a link in the description below. You can fill out an application, and, you know, if you're a good fit for the program, then you'll be able to book a call, and we'll be able to look over your child's specific situation and put together a game plan for them. So, um, but hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. If you did, go ahead and leave a like, and if you're new to the channel, go ahead and subscribe. Uh, thanks so much, guys, and I'll see you guys in the next one.
