What D1 Coaches Won't Tell You About Recruitment
In this instructional video, Connor Stirling Peterson explains the true drivers behind Division I (D1) golf recruitment and debunks common misconceptions. He begins by showing a public rankings database that lists players’ class rank, scoring differential, and the schools that recruited them. Peterson emphasizes that traditional approaches—swing‑coach tweaks, occasional tournament play, and vague “practice more” advice—have little impact on a player’s ability to earn a D1 scholarship. He outlines the non‑technical prerequisites (maintaining a 4.0 GPA, displaying a positive attitude) and then focuses on the quantitative metric that truly matters: scoring differential. Using concrete examples, he demonstrates how to calculate current differential, project improvement (typically 4 shots per year with focused coaching versus the average 1.2 shots per year), and determine whether a player’s projected differential will fall into the recruitable range (around –1 to –0.5). He explains rank thresholds (players ranked roughly 100‑150 in their class are highly likely to be recruited) and shows how small gaps in ranking correspond to recruitment outcomes. Peterson argues that strategic practice—prioritizing course strategy, mental game, and tournament selection—yields faster gains than low‑ROI mechanical changes. He also discusses the importance of playing high‑difficulty tournaments (especially for boys) to achieve a 72‑74 scoring average. Throughout, he invites viewers to apply for his coaching program, promising a data‑driven, holistic approach that aligns practice, strategy, and mental adjustments to meet the identified benchmarks. The video concludes with a call to action for parents to invest appropriately in their child’s development and to use the presented metrics to assess recruitment probability.
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Right. What's going on everyone. In today's video, I'm going to be talking about what most people don't really know about Division I recruiting. What most coaches won't tell you, certainly most swing coaches will not tell you. And my goal for this video is to help you understand, number one, how simple it realistically is to play Division I golf, but at the same time, why most of the things that you are probably thinking about doing aren't gonna get your child there. Um, and so let's go ahead and jump into the video. Just to be clear for all you guys who are new, this is all we talk about is helping junior golfers play Division I golf. If you're a returning subscriber, welcome back. This is going to be a good one. This one's foundational here, so let's dig into it. Now this page is open to the public, rankings and honors, college signings, shows you all of the players that recruited back into 2017. Shows us for boys and girls. And so it shows us where they're ranked in their class, what their scoring differential was, and the schools that recruited them. So why does this matter? Well, if you are like most people, your concept of getting better at golf, odds are, is you take your child's lessons, coach looks at their swing, um, has them hit a few balls, takes video, I don't like this. I'm gonna like change this or whatever. They work on something for that lesson. Kid works really hard on it. Maybe they don't. They go out, maybe they play better, maybe they don't. And then that cycle just repeats itself. Right. And so when you go through that and it's like, okay, well, we need to play in some tournaments. So you start finding some, some tournaments that, you know, maybe make sense in your local area that, you know, seem like they're good. And you go sign up for those and your child does just however they do, you know, like You know, let me try and do well. You know, let me try and beat so-and-so, or there's some good players in this field or whatever. They're going through that process. Either they play good and, you know, maybe they're happy or they don't play good and they're unhappy, or maybe they actually play better than their average or slightly worse than their average and they're pissed about it. And then the cycle just continues to repeat. You go back to swing coach. Um, maybe you got to the point where, you know, maybe your child's 13, 14 years old and they're looking at playing high school golf. Um, and they get onto the high school team, and, you know, maybe that's an anxiety for them, you're trying to get on the varsity or what have you. Um, and the reason I'm kind of going through all this is because everything I've described so far pretty much has no impact whatsoever on playing Division I golf. And so it's just super crucial that you guys understand that as a foundation here. Um, let me go ahead and give some honorable mentions and things that are actually important. Um, just because everyone, everyone talks about these. I'm going to talk about them just briefly here. Number 1, grades. Grades matter a lot. Um, you know, quite simply, your child should be aiming for a 4.0. Like, just, they want to play Division 1 golf, 4.0. 3.5 should be like the lowest, um, that they should be aiming for. So good academics are very important. So do not neglect that. If your child has bad academics, they got a, you know, 3.2 or a 2.9 or something like that, like They're not playing Division I golf. It doesn't matter how good they are, because they're going to be academically ineligible. So that's just like first kind of crucial thing here to recognize. Grades matter a lot. Number 2, attitude obviously matters, right? If your kid's like wacko on the golf course, that, that matters a lot. You know, a coach is not going to take kindly to, you know, seeing a player where they play kind of bad and they lose their, their kind Composure, right? Hopefully all those things go without saying, but nonetheless, I wanted to say them. The reason I do not emphasize those things is because everyone will tell you those things. And to be fair, they're true. But if you don't have what I'm going to talk to you guys about in this video, you're just, you're going to struggle. Like you're just, your child's going to have a hard time getting recruited. So let's go ahead and look at this. So once again, like I said, we can filter and kind of organize by where the player is ranked in their class. And as you guys can see, this is pretty comprehensive when it comes to Division I golf. Division III golf, Division II golf, not quite as comprehensive, more reliant on placement. Sure, there are kind of ranges that players tend to get recruited in, but it's just not as comprehensive. So when I'm working with players, we're trying to play Division I golf. This is kind of like my measurement that I use in part because I think Division I golf is a good goal, right? It's not, We're going to play professional golf, which is highly, highly unrealistic. Sure, it can happen. Sure, I work with players where I anticipate that that will happen, but it's not super common. On the flip side, if we just aim for Division III, what if we fall short of that? We just don't play college golf at all, right? Comparatively, do we aim for Division I? We fall short, we're still playing college golf. That's really the way to understand this. But anyway, hopefully you guys can see, just to be clear, on this right-hand side, D1, Obviously means, you know, Division I program. We just scroll all the way down and see all the Division I programs and where they're recruiting your different players. And you can make a judgment for this, you know, for yourself on if you have a particular program in mind or your child has a particular program in mind of where they're going to potentially be able to go. Now, one of the things that you'll notice is in the top, let's say 200, we don't really see a lot of gaps here as far as like, you know, look, 196, 196, 195, 193. Um, 189, 187. There's just pretty much like one right after the other. All these players are getting recruited. Now if we go even further up, we go to the top, like 100. And to be clear, this is in the class, not overall. So we got 100, 97, 96, 95, 95, 95, 93, 91, 90, 90, 89, 88, 86. And odds are the players in between these who are not getting recruited The odds are they either had some academic issue or they had some type of like red flag to the coach, just more often than not. Um, so that's just important to kind of like note and call out here. But anyway, when we're looking at these players, this is really what drives recruitment is, is your child in this position? And the, the thing that it's kind of the easiest way to understand this is like, look at all these players. It's like you can just, there's not any distance between like where this player's ranked them getting recruited, right? It's just like, if they're in this range, they're getting recruited. So when I'm working with players, my kind of like target that I like to aim for is like -1. -1 is kind of like right on that border, borderline here. It's like, yeah, can you make it in with like -0.5? Sure. Like, does it happen? Yes. Um, it's not something— it's getting closer and closer to an exception. When I teach, I like to teach you the rule rather than the exception. And if we have to fall on the exception, then, then so be it. But it's not where I like to kind of guide my players into. Um, just because as you guys will see here, it's just less and less probable. You know, it's like we go from 108— or let's look at Division I programs here— 8, um, 819 went to Drake, and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you know, non-Division I programs. And then 763 goes to Division I, then 752 goes to Division I. It's like if you looked at this and you're like, well, you know, if I got 755, does that mean I'm getting recruited to a Division I program? It's like maybe, but this player, you know, whoever's in between here didn't get recruited. So it's like, I'm not going to coach a player and say, oh yeah, it's probable to work out. Versus if I say, hey, you know, if we get to be ranked 100 or, or even 150th in our class, it's like, well, 51, 53, 54, 56, 56, 57. It's just like, it's highly probable to work out. So hopefully that makes sense to everyone. Now let's kind of go into the other side of this coin, scoring differential. Scoring differential is really a thing that's going to drive where you're quote unquote like ranked in your class. You don't need to worry about what everybody else is doing. You don't need to worry about like where you finish in tournaments. You just need to worry about what's the scoring differential and am I getting it to a range and am I going to get it to a range that makes sense. And so when we do this, we do not want to do this based on wishful thinking. We want to do this based on math. And so when, when I'm working with a player, I'm looking at where is our current scoring differential. I'll show you guys a couple different examples of different players that I work with here. Start off with, uh, one student who is going— just started his freshman year here. When we started working together, he had a scoring differential of 8.41. Now he's got a scoring differential of 5.12. That's in part because we're playing longer golf courses since we started working together. It's also in part because we've been able to maintain and slightly lower his scoring average to be able to see that much improvement. Now he's going into his freshman year, so we got 1, 2, realistically 3 years ahead of us before he's actually going to make that commitment. And when I'm working with a player, the average improvement that I see is about 4 shots per year. Now in his case, he's already, you know, just about, you know, gotten that. He's, he started off at 8.4. He's very, very close to being at that, that 4.4 range, which would be that 4 shots. Um, so he's either on track or pretty dang close to that. And so when I look at that, I say, okay, cool, if we improve by 12 shots over the next, you know, 3 years, let's just— I'm just going to pull out my phone calculator here and do some quick math. I got a 5.212 minus 12, that gets us to a negative 6.88 scoring differential. Now you guys might say, hey Connor, you know, maybe that's not realistic because, you know, if we look at, you know, boys overall, like, that's a you know, one of the best players in the country, that's a top 50 player. And on the one hand, I would say, yeah, I work with really good players, and I'm very good at developing talent. And, you know, that's what that looks like. And if that's something you guys want help with, got a link in the, uh, description below this video where you can apply, see if your child's even in a position to do that. If they're not, I'll just tell you in the application. Like, I'm not going to waste your time, um, and try and sell you something if I'm not confident that I can get you and get your child into that position. Um, so just fill out the application if that's something you're interested in. You want guidance, you want somebody like guiding your child, be like, hey, here's what to do. And not just like, oh, here's, you know, let me look at your data and here's how to practice. It's like everything of like down to big picture. We're trying to get here. We're here right now. Where are we at? Like, what are we doing specifically right now in our statistics? What do we need to improve? What's our practice need to look like? What are the strategic adjustments? What are the mental adjustments? If we need to touch mechanics, we'll touch mechanics. Ideally, we stay away from that though, just because it's low ROI. You know, it's like you change mechanics, you just end up in kind of like this, um, it's less and less probable. If I teach your child how to aim more effectively or have better strategy, we get like instant shots. We don't have to work that hard at it. Versus we talk about mechanics, now we're probably grinding on something for at least a few weeks, if not months. So just kind of like disclaimer there. Anyway, that's something you're interested in, link in the description, go ahead and check that out. But anyway, when I'm working with a player, like, that's really what I'm looking at is just like, where are we trying to get to? Where are we at right now? How fast is the progress? Is that probable? And for that player that I just showed you guys, if he doesn't get to a negative, you know, 6.8 or whatever that was, if he only got to a negative 3, guess what? He's still playing at a really good Division 1 program. And so that's, that's the context to really keep here is to say like, we're thinking probabilities, right? And so we're trying to figure out like, how do we get that number here? And so just as a comparison, we look at the average player on Junior Golf Scoreboard. The average player improves by about 1.2 shots per year. So if you're looking at wherever your child's at, if they're ranked on Junior Golf Scoreboard, just do that math and say like, is it probable? Now, some of you guys, it actually is. Some of you guys watch my videos. I know your child already has a 0.5 scoring differential. And they're going into like 8th grade. It's like, in that case, you know, you don't need to work with me to be able to play Division 1 golf. Now, if your child wants to be one of the best players in the country, or if they maybe even want to go beyond that and potentially play professional golf, then absolutely, yeah, I'm going to be able to help you. But again, just when we kind of think about like, you know, what's, you know, where's it a necessity, you know, let me show the flip side. You know, for that player, if he's just kind of like doing whatever, or or just like take any other player who's, you know, got a scoring differential of 5. Let's say they're going into a freshman year. Well, we got 3 years ahead of us and the average player improves by about a shot. So we're going to go 5, 4, 3, 2. Let's be generous and say they get to 1. You guys saw the list there. You guys can do your own research. It's about a Division III program. And so it's like, is that player really, really good? Yeah. You know, by objective standards, yes. But if they want to play Division I golf, they have to be better. And so in order to do that, they have to have a way that they're going to improve faster than average. Now, what I will say is a lot of these players, not necessarily all of them, so this is a little bit of crapshoot here. So we'll see. A lot of these players do actually improve faster than average. So let's look at this player. So he was at a 4, now he's at 5.8. Nothing too crazy there. Maybe a little bit less. Is that a little bit less than 2 shots or— yeah. Okay, cool. So August, prior to August, So he goes from 399, 1, um, negative 1.1. So quick math here, that's 2.8. Um, let's go year prior to that, improved by like 3.7. So it's like, that's not uncommon. Typically players who are going to be in a position to play Division 1 golf, are recruiting or improving faster than the average. It's not they just pop out of the womb and they're shooting 74. It's like, no, they start where everyone else starts. And they just end up improving faster. And so when we look at averages, the reason I like to look at averages is because you can look around and just like, say to yourself right now, like, we're watching this video. What does the average player do? When you just like, look at all these, these are ranked players, these people taking this very seriously. What does the average player do? I'll give you a second here. Odds are the average player is working with a swing coach on a pretty regular basis. They potentially have a mindset coach. They potentially have some type of a fitness program. They're working pretty damn hard at it. They're probably playing golf at least several times per week, and they're only improving by about a shot. And if I dug into the numbers further, um, which I'm not gonna do in this video, I've got other videos where I do that. Majority of the improvement in their scores just comes from their playing longer golf courses and they start hitting it further over time, which makes sense because they're getting older and bigger and stronger. It's not even because they shoot large scores. Most players kind of cap out around 80 to 78. And so when we look at these players, what are they shooting? 72 to 74. It's kind of that range. So in order to go from that 80 to 73, then you, you need to bring in some heavy guns. Like you need to be doing some, some serious stuff. So that is why I track that statistic so heavily. And it's like, I'm not going to talk to you guys about the players that I work with where it's like, oh, we're getting, you know, talking to Stanford or Clemson or whatever. It's like, cool. Like I'm, I'll briefly mention that it's a thing that happens, but that's a byproduct of this scoring differential being in the right spot. And so when we're saying like, okay, what's probable for your child, it makes a lot more sense to just say, where are we at right now? Where are we trying to get to? And then how fast are we gonna get there? Like, what's realistic? And so again, I'm quoting averages. Some players do better, some players do worse. But if we look at average, average result, that, that's really what we want to look at, right? And so if we're going to evaluate, you know, what's probable to happen, that's what we want to be looking at. Let me show you another player. So this player is going into the 8th grade here, and he has a scoring differential of 0.94. So much better player, just in, in the objective sense. Obviously, you know, different star points, blah blah blah, all that stuff. But it's just, he's in a position where— and when we initially talked about working together, you know, we started off 9, or 3.91. And now we're in a position for him where, you know, we're trying to become one of the best players in the country just because of, of where he, you know, he started off. And it's just like, hey, if we're going to improve by, again, 4 shots per year— in his case, he's improved rapidly, so there's also an element there of, you know, we're trying to take things, uh, not, not anticipate that we're just going to continuously improve by a shot per month indefinitely. Like, that's not realistic. But, you know, considering the amount of time he's got, 4 years ahead of him, right? So it's like we can fall well short of 4 shots per year and he's still going to be able to accomplish that goal. And realistically, you know, if you just wanted to play Division 1 golf, it's like you could just pretty much coast. Um, now obviously the better you get, the more opportunities you have to kind of stumble because you just have like fewer and fewer, um, kind of low-hanging fruit, you know? It's like you can't just brute force your way the same way you can from 90 to 80 just out of like getting stronger or something like that. It's like you have to be very intentional about things. And, you know, some degree at that level, inching forward is, you know, just as hard to some degree as just like not going backwards as well. Um, so that's really important to, to kind of keep, keep track here. But long story short, when we're looking at this and we're saying like, what do you need to do? What does your child need to do to play Division 1 golf? It really comes down to the, the things I mentioned at the beginning of the video— grades, Good attitude, all that stuff. But realistically, it's scoring average and tournaments. We're playing in high-quality, high-difficulty tournaments. For boys, it's a little bit harder to do that than girls. Girls, you can kind of roll out of bed and find a golf course that's 5,800, 6,000 yards. For boys though, I talk about AJGA in part because there's a lot of time you just can't roll out of bed and find a 7,000-yard golf course. So there's that element. I just get the scoring average down to that 72 to 74 range and to do that strategically. And so it shouldn't be a mystery to you guys. It shouldn't be, uh, well, I don't know, like you're watching a video like this, you should be able to say is like, okay, well, we're objectively here. And you know, if we just kind of do what everyone else is doing, we shouldn't expect to improve by about this much on average. Don't anticipate yourself being the exception. Um, I know that that's probably a tendency, but it's just That's not a good idea. It's better to, to play to the averages, right? Um, and then look at that and say, okay, cool. You know, how would that change if we improve by more faster? Right. And that, that, that'd be really the litmus test for you guys to say like, hey, if you're considering, you know, applying for, for my coaching is just like, look at the numbers and say like, okay, cool. What does this do for us if we only improve by a shot versus 4 shots? So I'll kind of leave you guys on this. One of the things that comes up to me a lot with, from parents is they're like, well, You know, I don't know if my kid's good enough yet, or I don't know if my kid's serious enough yet. Um, and in my opinion, that doesn't make a ton of sense because unless your child is playing less than once a week and practicing less than once a week, then, you know, then they, they need to do that first. But if they're, if they're able to practice for at least 2 hours a week, they're able to play at least a round of golf per week. They're doing enough. It's just a question of getting them to do the right stuff. And as they get better faster, they'll be able to see that positive feedback and they'll want to play more. So it's not necessarily, well, you know, once they get serious, then I'll do it. Um, this also puts a really negative vibe to the kid of like, I'm going to make this investment, so you better do it. You know, it's like, no, you want to be like, hey, you know, I want to help my kid as much as possible. We're either going to do— if we're going to do this, we're going to do it at a high level or we're not. And so in order to do that, it's like you make the investments that are necessary to, you know, set your child up for success. You know, it's like If your child needs speech therapy, it's like, do you just say, oh no, I'm going to wait until like they're a little bit better at speaking and then I'll worry about it. Or do I, do you wait until it's like, well, you know, now we really need it. It's like, no, you go in there and you say like, hey, you know, like my kid needs a little bit of help and I'm going to go get them the best help that I possibly can. Um, same thing should be true with golf. If you've got a child who's serious, they're putting in the time, you want to get them the best coaching possible. So that's all I'd say, you guys. Hope this video is helpful and kind of illuminating. Hopefully it simplifies this process a lot for you guys. You don't have to, you know, just think so hard on this. You know, I didn't say one thing about posting videos or emailing coaches or any of those things, because it really just doesn't matter that much. So once again, hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you guys want support in this, go ahead and fill out the application below. Otherwise, I will see you guys in the next video.
