The Real Path To Division 1 Golf

In this video, I'm going to be covering what I believe is the real path to Division 1 golf. This is something that I get asked about all the time, and I think it's commonly kind of misunderstood, especially when it comes to when your child should get started and what they really need to do in order to make that happen. A lot of the time, it kind of seems like it's kind of a black box, and in this video, I want to really illuminate you guys on what it actually takes, and the questions that you should be asking yourself. So hopefully you guys enjoy this. If you're new here, this is all we talk about is helping players play Division 1 golf. And if you're a returning subscriber, welcome back, always great to have you. So let's go ahead and dig into this. When we're trying to accomplish a goal like playing Division 1 golf, we need to be really clear about where are we trying to get to specifically, right? If we don't understand that, then we're really going to struggle. We're gonna struggle to be successful. I see one of the kind of worst misconceptions that I see is, oh, in order to play Division 1 golf, you just need to be good and you need to work hard. And that's just not really how life works. Number one, it's not how life works in terms of just like, oh, work hard and you're gonna get great results. That's just not true. You know, obviously getting results, you know, does take, you know, some work, but a lot of the times just thinking, hey, I worked hard, therefore I'm gonna get the result is not how this stuff works. So it's like you can work hard and get the result and you can work really hard and not get the result, right? So that's not the main thing that drives whether or not we get the result. So it's more important to ask what specifically do I need to do? And a big part of that is just clearly defining wherever I'm trying to get to, because if we don't have a clear definition of the target, then it's like we could work really hard and, and, you know, make a lot of progress, but just not hit our end target, right? So a good example of this is if you wanted to go to Harvard, You know that you need to have a 4.0 GPA. It's just as a starting point, right? If I just told you, hey, be smart and work hard, that could be a 3.75. And to be fair, that's a really good GPA, but it's not good enough to get into Harvard. Now going even beyond that, you might say, hey, well, it's just a 4.0, right? Well, it's like, no, like we need to be in advanced classes. You know, we need to have some extracurriculars. And so you might ask yourself, okay, well, when do we need to start preparing for that? It's like, well, how far back can you go? Because it's like, all right, well, if I want to be in, I don't know, let's say AP Calculus my senior year, well, then I need to be in honors pre-calc, and then I need to be in honors Algebra 2, and then I need to be in, you know, whatever, probably honors geometry before that, which means I need to be pretty high-level algebra in 8th grade, which means that I need to be, you know, probably pre-algebra, 7th grade. You know, maybe we're getting into, you know, some algebra stuff in 6th grade. But you really start to think back, it's like you have to kind of get into position fairly early. You think it's like, oh, you're applying to Harvard, you know, it's like that only matters when you're applying in junior year. And it's like, no, like you need to start thinking way ahead. And that's not just true for, you know, one class. That's true across the board for, for a program like Harvard. Now, here's the kicker. Playing Division I golf is actually harder than getting into Harvard. So I'm gonna encourage you guys to have the same perspective about what it's gonna take in order to accomplish that goal, right? If you wanna help your child go to Harvard, you know you're gonna have to invest in a lot of extracurriculars. You know you're gonna have to invest in preparing for SAT scores. You know that you're gonna have to probably invest in tutors to make sure that they're on track, that they're getting the support that they need. So when you start to think about like what's actually required, It's a pretty substantial amount, and it requires a lot of intentionality. We don't want to just sleepwalk our way through this. And so let's go ahead and actually get into this. So there's this page, College Signings. You guys will see me reference this all the time, and I think it's, it's profoundly valuable. Shows us all the players that recruited back in 2017. This is for both boys and girls. It shows us where they're ranked in their class, what their scoring differential was, and the program that recruited them. And so this is very comprehensive for Division I. It's less so for Division II and Division III, as you guys can kind of see over here. Um, obviously there's a lot more programs that are, you know, recruiting that are Division II and Division III. They just don't have quite as large of budgets versus Division I, very large budgets. Um, anyway, this really sets a target for us to say like, hey, if we want to go to this particular program or we want to go to this level of school, then we need to get to this particular scoring range. And that's just so, so crucial to really comprehend here, is, is just We want to set that target and say, okay, cool, I need to get to— let's just call it a -2 scoring differential. Now, for all you guys who are probably wondering what's a scoring differential, very simply, it's just a way of saying, hey, if you shoot 72 at 7,000 yards, it's better than if you did it at 6,000 yards. For those of you who are maybe a little bit more familiar with some of these numbers, it's the top 75% of your scoring differentials. So on Junior Golf Scoreboard, the scoring differential would just be the difference between the score you shot and the course rating. So if I shot a 72 on a course rating of 74, scoring differential is -2. So that's really all that is, um, and that's what we're trying to get to as far as an average goes. So that's, that's the target we want to set. The next question we have to ask ourselves is, where are we? And where your child is at has kind of two main factors: how old they are and what scores they're shooting. Those are kind of like the two main variables. Now I'll just address the kind of most obvious thing right out the gate. If your child is not playing golf on a regular basis, they're That's the first step here, right? If they're, you know, saying, hey, I want to play at a high level, but, you know, you guys' idea of playing golf so far is like hitting balls on the driving range, and like maybe occasionally they play, you know, 9 holes or in a tournament or something like that, first thing they need to do is they need to play a lot more golf. Um, that's just how it is. You're practicing every day with— if you don't play golf, it's kind of like empty calories, right? It's not actual, like, you know, like real food. We need to go out there, we need to actually play golf. Um, but assuming that, there's too many things we can consider. The first kind of range of players would be kind of like 5 to 10, right? The youngest players I ever see playing in tournaments are like 5 years old. Um, you know, obviously very, very young there, up to about 10 years old. We're playing 9 holes, and the biggest challenge that that player is going to face is keeping golf fun and just keeping them engaged with the game. Because at the end of the day, if they're reasonably decent at golf if they improve at a reasonable rate, like not even something that's like good, just like okay, they have a decent probability of being successful. And so that's why a lot of the challenge there is just keeping golf engaging and fun for them. Now, if they only improve at kind of an average rate, which is about 1.2 shots per year, there's still a decent chance that they'll burn out just purely on— if they're putting a lot of effort into it, they're not getting a lot out, they can burn out just on that. And so those are kind of things to consider there. But if your child's that young, it really becomes a question of how do we keep this game engaging and fun for them, right? 10 to 12 is kind of the next range of, you know, kind of ages there where it's like your child can essentially be a beginner and still have a realistic shot of playing Division 1 golf, you know, just even if there's like rank out of the gate. A lot of the challenges there is going to be increasing the amount of golf that they're playing. So if they're going from 9 holes to playing 18 to playing 36, 54, etc., etc., that's really the kind of like big arc there. Obviously we're developing skills all the way throughout this, but that. That's kind of the biggest challenge, um, in that, that age range. A lot of potential there as well for the players, um, and that's preparing them for AJGA, which starts when they're 12 years old. Obviously you can get into AJGA later, but you know, just in theory here, you got to maximize what you have in front of you, right? So if your child's 11 years old, what's really the main challenges? Playing more golf, getting comfortable shooting lower scores, getting prepared for AJGA. That's kind of like the short term. Race there. If you've got a 12 to 14-year-old, this is really kind of what I find to be the sweet spot for players. Um, they're close enough to the end goal of trying to get recruited that they can kind of focus. The maturity level is a lot higher than comparatively to like a 9-year-old or something like that. Um, so it's a lot easier for them to implement things. But at this point, it's kind of like the last range of ages where we can kind of be anywhere. You know, they're shooting in like the 90s or like the mid-80s. Like they've got a good shot at playing Division 1 golf with the right coaching, um, or at least above average coaching, I should say. Um, that, that's kind of like my sweet spot when I'm working with players. I love working with that because, you know, let's say we got 4 or 5 years ahead of us. The average player I work with improves by about 4 shots per year, so I can just model out we're improved by 16 or 20 shots. It's like most players are in kind of a range where it's like, yeah, we're gonna be okay, you know, as long as we're shooting like the 90s or like high 80s or something like that, like we're good to go. Um, once we move past that, we get in high school. This is where parents typically think about like, oh, I want to start taking things seriously. But this is also where we're a lot more constrained by where are you already scoring, or where's your child already scoring. So again, when I'm using that kind of like 4-shot example here, if you've got a freshman who's got a scoring average of 80, it's like, you know, realistically we got freshman, sophomore, junior year, we got 3 years ahead of us. Improve by 4 shots per year, 12 shots, we're good to go. Like, we're gonna be totally fine there. Um, but if we got a scoring average of 90 Not, not quite as much, right? We're, we're more looking at Division 3. So that's where we start to kind of like bottleneck ourselves. But anyway, long story short, we need to know, okay, here's what our target is, here's where we're at right now, how big is that gap, how fast is it, uh, how fast can we reasonably improve, and what should we do from there? So I see this thing going on right now. Maybe it's just because my ads are popping up everywhere, but there's kind of down on the idea of like D1 or bust. It's kind of what I'm seeing. And the thing that I think is important consider here. Number one, obviously we want to have realistic expectations, right? And you can kind of get caught up in that mentality if you don't do this math that I just walked you through. But it's like, if you want to achieve something at a high level, usually it's a good idea to set high goals, right? Because even if you fall short of that goal, you're still gonna be in an okay spot. So what do I mean by that? A player who's going to play at a Division 1 program, a lot of the time those players want to play professional golf. And so when they fall short of professional golf, they still end up playing Division 1 golf. If you want to play Division 1 golf, all those players might not necessarily get that, and they might play Division 3 golf. If you set your target as low as Division 3 golf, there's a decent shot that you're not even going to hit that goal because you're not going to take it seriously enough, right? And so that's why it's so important to understand. It's like, yes, we want to be realistic. That's why it's so important to like track you know, like how much, you know, the average player improves with a particular coach. That's why I do that with my students, cuz I want to set realistic expectations. I do not wanna work with a family where they're just like, oh, we're gonna improve by 10 shots in a year. Is that realistic? I'm gonna be like, no, it's not realistic. And it's not realistic for anyone else either. If you see anything, it's like, hey, I can help you improve by 10 shots in 3 months. It's like, no, you can't. You know, it's like maybe if you took like your worst score, your best score, maybe you can do something like that. But it's like, it's not, uh, it's not an accurate representation of what's happening. Right? And so long story short here, we want to make sure that we just have— we're grounded in reality. We're saying, okay, here's our target, here's where we're at right now, here's how big that gap is. Now, how do we go about doing this? Well, we want to make sure that we're playing in tournaments that are ranked. And so I'm just pulling up a student that I work with. We want to make sure that we're playing in ranked events here. These are events that are 36 holes. So if your child's just playing high school golf, they're just playing 18 holes, you could be playing a lot of tournaments, they could be working really hard, they could be shooting great scores, is not going to matter hardly at all unless they're playing in ranked events. That's just, you know, that might sound unfair, but it's like, if you knew that that's what you need to do, just do it. Like, don't complain about it. It's just, it is what it is. Um, they need to play in 4 ranked events. It's really not that much. Um, so it's just having those, those events there. Obviously there's going to be some better events, and you can see here at the AJGA, sometimes we're playing 54 holes. If you consider the practice round or potentially qualifier to get into these events, you're looking at 72 or more holes, which is why I emphasize the importance of we need to get comfortable playing a lot of golf. And so this player that we're looking at here, he's in 8th grade, you know, he's very comfortable playing a ton of golf. And so, you know, getting your child in a position where they're ranked gives you a very objective metric on where they're at right now. So you're going to get their current scoring differential and you can say, okay, cool, we're starting here, we're trying to get here, here's how big the gap is, we need to improve by 3 shots per year. And then you're able to back that out and say, okay, cool. Well, how much do they need to improve per quarter or per month or what have you? And if you go through the course of a year and they've only improved by a shot and you look back on that and be like, hmm, they're not on track for that goal, right? Then you need to make an adjustment or you need to adjust whatever the target is. And so that, that's kind of how this stuff works. Now, most parents, in my opinion, kind of make the mistake. And this is also to some degree with weight. Coaches are. A lot of golf coaching is kind of optimized around swing mechanics. And so swing mechanics fits into a nice little box where you show up to your lesson, um, you tell the coach like, hey, I'm struggling with this, and then they watch you hit some balls, and then they tell you stuff they don't like about it, and then you go ahead and like work on that stuff. And, you know, they charge you by the hour, and then your child goes out there and either they play great and they're super happy and they text the coach, they'd be like, hey, it's amazing, or they're not happy, they didn't shoot well, and now it's like, all right, cool, go get another lesson, right? And when your child is not playing well, coach is always going to go back to, well, you know, it takes time, just keep at it, right? That, that's kind of like the universe it is. And it's, it's really not the coach's fault, it's just like that's how golf instruction has been presented. And so like that's kind of what everyone accepts. I personally don't like that, that method of instruction. And so like I'm in a group where I help coach coaches along with a mentor of mine, um, who does that as well. And you know, one of the things that, that always resonates with the coaches when I talk about it is the idea of We do not want to be in the business of selling time and lessons as a swing coach or as a golf instructor because it creates an incorrect incentive as a coach. And what I view myself as, as a coach, our job is to help your child or any player improve and shoot lower scores as quickly as and as efficiently as possible. And so when I'm working with a player, I'm thinking through the spectrum of what is the highest leverage thing that I can do to help them shoot better scores that's going to require the least effort and be the least risky. And in my kind of mental matrix of this, I just don't put swing mechanics work at a particularly, you know, high on that list. I think that it is very intensive as far as time goes, and you probably notice your child's probably getting like weekly lessons or, you know, maybe even more frequently than that. It's highly intensive, and it's very— it's variable on the outcome that we're gonna get. So I'm sure at some point your child might have gotten a swing lesson, or they may try to make a change to their swing, and it made sense to everyone. It made sense to coach, made sense to them, made sense to you, and they just couldn't pull it off, just couldn't make it work. And it's like, the idea was, hey, if we do this, we're gonna get better, but didn't end up happening, right? Everyone's kind of experienced that to some degree, and when we're trying to make a change, it could take weeks, it could take months, and the outcome is kind of uncertain. Let's just say it's 50/50, right? Or maybe it's 75% of the time it's like better, right? But the point is like we don't know, and it takes a long time to get that result. Versus let's look at your game and say, oh well, there's this one part of our game that is a major hole that's keeping us from scoring, and oh wait, we don't even practice it, or we don't practice in a format that makes any sense. Like let's say we 3-putt too often, but all of our time you know, spent putting is hitting like 8-footers, which doesn't apply to like our short putts or our lag putting and doesn't really help us do anything. So we're putting a lot of time into something that doesn't really do anything for us. And it's like, if we just adjusted stuff and got us focused in the right area, that can make a massive impact and probably wouldn't take that long because we're going from putting nothing into something to putting, you know, maybe 20, 40 minutes into that particular area. You know, that's an infinite increase in the amount of time and effort being put in But it's not really that much absolute time, and it's gonna have a huge impact on the player's scores, right? So hopefully you guys can kind of see, it's like sometimes those insights have a much bigger impact and a lot faster impact into, you know, the player's ability to improve. And so when I'm working with a player, I just try and work through that hierarchy of just like, what's gonna be the easiest thing? And sometimes those are, you know, practice. That's something I talk about a lot. Sometimes it's strategic, sometimes it's mental. Right? Those are different things. Like, I'll give you guys another example. There's one student I was working with who was really struggling with his lack putting, or just, you know, even just links 3 putting in general. And so, you know, we had gotten him doing the right practice that was kind of working. It was helping him improve, but not as much as we would have wanted. We looked at his mechanics. There were definitely some issues there, and there's some things we were trying to sort out. But we got— eventually got to this point where it's just kind of like, hmm. So I went ahead and made an adjustment to his pre-shot routine and the way that he was going through, you know, that process. Long story short, we cut out his practice stroke, which, you know, might seem counterintuitive. Right away got the results. Putting improved pretty substantially. 3-putting pretty much disappeared, um, and that made a huge difference, right? And so I essentially developed a tool belt over time of those different things that I know that I can pull out to say like, okay, cool, this should get this— these scores down. Um, that's, that's just all been built out of necessity because again, I'm evaluating myself based off of this scoring differential number and saying, hey, what's the easiest way to get this number down? Rather than saying, oh well, I'm just going to shove everybody into the same box and we're going to solve every problem the same way. I'm able to look at every player dynamically and say, hey, what's the main issue right now? Do we need to play better tournaments? Do we need to be more strategic about where, you know, the distances we're laying up to? Do we just need to practice a little bit more effectively? Do we need to make adjustments to our mental game? And then yes, sometimes when it's applicable, hey, maybe we need to make an adjustment to our golf swing. But we always want to make sure that it's tied to a specific outcome we're trying to get, not just hit more greens. It's like, if I'm going to change my golf swing, it needs to be because I'm either going to hit the ball more solidly, I'm going to have more control over the shot shape, or I'm going to be able to start the ball online more consistently. Those are pretty much the 3 things. If we're not doing any of those things, what are we doing? Like, we're just cosmetically changing our golf swing for no reason. And, you know, news flash, everyone hates their golf swing. Everyone hates the way their golf swing looks. And so that is not something that we want to be chasing. We want to be looking at from a data-driven perspective What is going to cause us to shoot lower scores as quickly as possible? So anyway, going back to this, when you're looking at where your child is ranked, you're going to have two different variables here. You're going to have the tournaments that they're playing in, and you're going to have the scoring average, right? In general, we want to push these tournaments to be as long as possible. It's kind of a rule of thumb. I'm working more directly with families. This is something that we're doing together, making sure they're playing in the right events. It's very, very straightforward. That's something you're interested in along with, you know, everything else that I'm talking about here is application below this video. You can check that out. Aside from that though, the other variable here is lowering the scoring average. That's where the majority of work needs to go into. So if you're working with any type of coaching right now, this needs to be how they're measured. If you have a coach that you've hired and they do not have a clear metric that they need to optimize around, they are going to struggle to get your child results, not because they're a bad coach necessarily, but because they don't have that clear, like, that clear measurement there. And a lot of coaches just aren't used to this kind of like data-driven approach. And so, you know, that kind of is what it is. But it's important to understand that if you want to be successful in this, you got to measure stuff. What gets measured gets done, right? So when I'm working with a player, I'm looking at the scoring average. I'm having them— let me just go ahead and pull up this player just for the sake of this video here. Bear with me for, for 2 seconds. There we go. All right, cool. So when I'm working with any player, I'm having them track all of their statistics because yeah, sure, it's cute and all to know like, hey, here's whatever our scoring average is, but like it's more important to ask why do we shoot those scores and what specifically can we do to lower those scores in the most efficient way possible. So, you know, this player is an example here. We've got a scoring average of 73.3, and that's about what we have, you know, on Junior Golf Scoreboard. It's almost exactly the same, right? So then I can look at this and say, okay, out of all these things that I can help this player do better, like, what are there? And there's, there's a few main things that I like to pay attention to: penalty right off the tee, greens regulation, scrambling, 3-putts, and birdie conversion rate. I like these numbers because I can project what a player is going to shoot on average, and this works extremely well. I've tested this with PGA Tour players, and you can, you know, plug this model in with like Scottie Scheffler's data, and you're going to get pretty much what he shoots. So it allows us to be very accurate about, you know, what's going to have the biggest impact. In this case, for this player, when we first looked at this, grid regulation is about 60%. One of the things you guys will notice here— so we started working together here in— where did I tag this? Going back to the beginning here, we started working together end of June. So if we look at this, you got June 3.85, 3.59, 1.97, 0.94, 0.59. Obviously the class rank improved, but this is just pretty substantial improvement here. And if we look at the scores that start coming out here, you got, you know, 68, 66, 68, 69, 73, 66, 67, 72. Just a lot of really good scores. And a big part of that was because we made this emphasis on greens regulation. There's different ways that we kind of went about helping this player improve his greens regulation, but that was the big focus. And so what ended up happening here, you guys can see, we ended up getting to a spot where we're hitting 80% of our greens. And like, I didn't touch his golf swing, and it's like, you know, were there things that could be tweaked? Yeah, absolutely. But it just in this case didn't make the most sense. It was— we were able to do other things that were easier and more of a sure thing in order to be able to improve that greens regulation. Now, 80% is a little bit off the charts, right? It's just a little bit unrealistic. And so we've kind of reverted back a little bit from there, and that's totally fine. But long story short, what this allows us to do with any player, you know, if you're doing this with your child, um, is we're able to say, okay, we're here right now, we want to get to this range of scores, what's the most efficient way for us to get there? And in theory, you could model this out over the course of years to say, hey, this is the first thing we need to do, this is the next thing we need to do, this is the next thing we need to do. Hopefully you could imagine how valuable this is, even if you are working with a swing coach, to be able to say, hey, here's our agenda, these are the statistics we're tracking, here's what needs to move. All right, cool. Like, we're going to evaluate this progress, and like, that's what we want to do here. Um, and that's going to be a lot, you know, it's going to be a lot clearer even for a coach to say, hey, okay, if this is, you know, what I'm being judged on, then here's what I'm going to optimize around, and here's, you know, how we're going to go ahead and accomplish that goal. And I'm going to get the feedback if I'm doing a bad job. That's part of the reason why when I'm working with players I'm updating, you know, where we're at. You know, it's like we started off here at, you know, 75.2, and now we're down to 73.19. And so that's a big part obviously of why this player's improved. We're also playing longer golf courses on average, and that's another reason why, you know, these statistics kind of fluctuated here. So we started off at 60%, you know, on shorter golf courses. Now we're closer to a little bit better than 60%, but we're on a lot longer golf courses. We're playing invitationals now and those kinds of things, right? So again, it's important to understand just how to use these different variables, um, in order to help your child consistently improve. So if I were to kind of like back this up, simple, simple perspective here, we need to set our target, right? We need to have a clear target where we're at. Next, we need to know exactly where we're at today, right? So once you have those two variables of where we're trying to get to, where we're at right now, we've got the distance, we have the rate that we need to improve, then we need to say, okay, cool, what's going to help us improve the fastest, right? Um, you know, is it playing in better tournaments? Is it analyzing the statistics and, you know, focusing on a particular area that maybe we haven't put a lot of time into? Whatever the case is, we want to know the order of events that we're going to do so that we can just go out there and execute on that. And then we want to measure our progress to see, okay, how are we trending along? What's actually, you know, moving the needle, right? And the stuff that we're doing, is it actually working? We want to be able to get that feedback. And so as you guys can see here, it's like we started off at 3.59, and then we were at 2.7, and then we were at 0.94, and now we're at 0.59, right? So that's feedback that, hey, the stuff that we're doing is actually moving the needle. It's actually working, right? And so you want to be able to have this for your child, and then you won't have to worry about like, oh, are we on pace? Like, I don't know. It's like you're gonna be able to see this pretty clearly. Either we're on track or we're not, and you know, we can adjust accordingly and we make decisions from there. So I hope this video is helpful for you and just kind of understanding what it actually takes to play Division 1 golf, and that you don't need to kind of fall into this, like, these extremes, right? It's like, this is a math problem. It's very straightforward. Um, obviously there's a lot of variables in here. Obviously you're not going to know every little drill, um, that you need to do in order to help your child improve. You're not necessarily going to know how to build a spreadsheet like this from scratch. Um, and so obviously that's why I do what I do. There's a lot of stuff here. Even if I did my best to tell you guys everything, and I do, you know, give away a lot of this stuff on YouTube here, there's nothing that really beats me actually just doing this for you guys and telling you, hey, here's where you need to focus, actually looking at your child's statistics and saying, hey, here's where we need to be putting attention, and actually having me holding you accountable along the way in this process. So if that's something that you're interested in, you want my personal help guiding your child in this process, You can click the link below to the application, fill it out. Make sure— it'll make sure that your child's actually in a position where I can help them, right? If they're not in a position where I can help them, you know, reach their goals, then we're just not going to do anything. Um, I'll just walk you everything you need to know. Um, if it makes sense, I'll be able to grab a spot on my calendar, and then we'll go from there, talk it over, make sure it makes sense, and then, then go from there, model out this plan for your child. So hopefully this video is helpful for you guys. If it was, go ahead and leave a like, helps push it out to more people in the YouTube algorithm. And if you're new here, go ahead and subscribe to the channel, and I'll see you guys in the next video.