When Should You Start Thinking About College Golf Development?

All right, what is going on guys? So in today's video, I'm going to be covering how early should your junior golfer start taking college development, college recruiting seriously. This is one of the most common questions that I get from parents. This is also one of the things that I see parents and junior golfers have misconceptions about, or just their inability to manage this particular piece of information is really what causes them to succeed or fail in going on to play college golf. If you enjoy videos like this, go ahead and leave a like below and subscribe to the channel for more videos about college recruiting, college development, specifically for junior golf. But let's go ahead and hop into the video. So main thing here, the main question is how early should your junior golfer start thinking about college golf? And realistically, like, what should they be doing? I think it's really important to have that foundational understanding of what are we even trying to do here? How are college coaches looking for your junior golfer? And what can you do with that information in order to set your junior golfer up for success? And so the first thing, the foundation here, is Junior Golf Scoreboard as kind of like a baseline understanding. If your junior golfer is not already ranked on Junior Golf Scoreboard and they're, you know, 11, 12, 13 years old, I highly, highly, highly recommend going to just Junior Golf Scoreboard. There's other videos on the channel that go through how specifically to find the tournaments that are ranked. Just go there, find the tournaments that are ranked, play at least 4. If you can do that, your junior golfer is going to have a ranking, and that's going to be super, super valuable. Not for the sake of like, oh, you know, you're going to have college coaches reaching out to you because your 12-year-old's ranked. That's not really what matters. I don't even care what they're ranked relative to everybody else in their class or anything like that at that point. But what it's going to do for you is it's going to say, here's where you're at, here's where your junior golfer is at. And you can also look and say, all right, well, you know, where are kids getting recruited? And where do we need to be in that timeframe? And so this is really what colleges' coaches are doing. Like they're looking at rankings and they're saying, it's kind of like the Yellow Pages, you know, they go to the page and they say, okay, cool. Who's, you know, who's the caliber for me to get ranked here? And again, we can use that both ways. So I'm not necessarily saying use it to get the attention of coaches in this case at the early stage, but it's still valuable to know. And so this is what this looks like. You know, if you go to a class of 2024 signings or whenever you're watching this, there's a page that says college signings. Again, I have other videos on the channel. that, that you can actually find this specific page. But it's going to show you where players are ranked, um, when they actually get recruited. So you can say, okay, well, we're here today and we want to get here, and so this is the gap and here's how many years we have to accomplish that goal. And then we just divide that out and we know, okay, we need to improve by this many shots per year. And so again, this is where you want your junior golfer to be. The better their ranking is, the better the program is they're going to get into, right? So if you want to go to a Power 5 conference Well, then you want to be a better golfer. If you're okay with Division III, you don't have to be quite as good. And so what you want to do is you want to look at what the other players are doing. You don't need to reinvent the wheel here. You just want to see like, what is— what are other people already doing? And then we can judge where we need to be and what's realistic in order to get there. And so this is an example of, you know, one player who's really well ranked in his class, going to a really good program, and we can kind of see here where they're going. And what their scoring average is. So pretty solid stuff. And which, which tournaments they're playing in as well. I'm not going to go too much into the tournaments, uh, stuff in this video, but there are other videos on the channel as well that go through that. Here's another example. So we can kind of start to see there's a little bit of a pattern of where we're trying to get to. Now this is an example of a player that I've worked with who wanted to play college, but long story short, better scores and better tournaments means that we're ranked better, and ultimately we end up, you know, getting the attention of college coaches. Easier. So this is what I do with players. I look at where they're at and I look at their game and I say, okay, cool, based on your game, here's what we need to do to improve as fast as possible. It's not just saying, hey, you know, I'm a golf coach and I'm going to go blow up your golf swing and now we're going to swing it better and magically we're going to go out there and shoot better scores. What I do is I look at players' numbers and say, okay, cool, objectively, what's the easiest thing to improve here? Right? Because we might say, okay, well, we need to improve a lot in our ball striking. But we might be 12 years old and we might have a major limitation just how far we can hit it. So it's not very relevant to look at that information. At the same time though, you might be able to say, all right, well, we're losing a lot of putts, we're losing a lot of shots just 3-putting. That's because we can't make 4-footers. Anyone can learn how to make 4-footers. And so that makes sense as an easy first place to start. Okay, cool. Now we're a shot better, we're 2 shots better, we're 3 shots better. If we can accomplish that over the course of a year and do that every single year, well, then it allows us a very smooth path to improve and accomplish our goals. But it really is that simple. So what's the catch? Well, there's only 1 or 2 spots available for every Division I program. And so in a certain sense, playing Division I golf is harder than getting into Harvard, right? Like, here's the actual numbers behind it. It's only about 1.6% of players end up playing Division I golf, and about 3.59% of applicants get into Harvard. Right? So it's harder to do. Um, so that's something you should be taking very, very seriously here. If you have a junior golfer who's, you know, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 years old and they're like, hey, I want to go play college golf, I want to play Division 1 golf, we should be looking at that like if your child came to you and said, hey, I want to go, I'm going to go to Harvard. We need to start taking that, um, that very, very seriously. And so how, like, when should they really start taking things seriously? Well, in general, you're going to get this piece of advice: well, it doesn't really matter until sophomore year, um, June 15th. That's kind of like the standard response. And so you get all the agencies and stuff like that, they're gonna like email your, your name out to coaches. Um, that's kind of what they fixate on because that's very easy to do. It's very easy to take a player and say, hey, we'll make a profile for you and send it out to coaches. But if you don't have the scores, you we've already been over this, they're not going to be interested. I don't care how many emails I get about the kid who can shoot 80, like, it's not impressive, right? I want to see somebody who is actually, you know, capable of shooting those scores. I'm already looking at the rankings, and so when a kid pops up and be like, oh, let me take a look at this, right? That's how this process really works. And so, you know, when we really consider, you know, something like it, it's harder to do by about twice as much than Harvard would you have that same attitude toward Harvard? Would you wait until sophomore year, junior year, in order to start prepping your child to try and apply for Harvard? If you said, my child doesn't need to think about their ranking until they're getting recruited, it's kind of like saying I don't need to have my child thinking about their GPA until they're applying for Harvard, right? It's just, it's a backwards way of thinking. And remember, we're not just saying like ranking in a vacuum, we're saying what's this ranking comprised of? It's comprised of the, the scoring average that they have in the tournaments that they're playing in, right? Right? We can't just wave a magic wand and play in the best tournaments and shoot really good scores. We can't go from shooting 85 but we're developing and playing, you know, in high school events to go playing in the junior players and shooting 73 on average. Like, that just doesn't happen. And again, like, you would look like a clown if you, if you had that and you said that clearly. And this is why a big part of what I do is I try and help you guys have clarity on this stuff, because if you're clear about Okay, here's what I need to do, then you can make intelligent decisions about what you need to do with that information, right? And that, that's the biggest part. If I just tell you where you need to focus, you're going to be able to improve a lot. If we get really granular, then we're going to be able to improve really fast. So when should your junior golfer start? It really is just a math problem, is the way that I like to look at it. And there's really two variables, right? There's the average annual improvement that they need to have, and there is the goal scoring difference, right? So the average annual, uh, improvement is 1.18 shots, um, on Junior Golf Scoreboard. That's about average improvement that you're going to see for players if you run the numbers. That's what I've done. And so at this point, it really kind of begs the question of like, where should you aim, right? That's the next real question. It's like, okay, cool, we know we can improve by this much on average. It's like, where— what do we do with that information? We say we want to go play at Stanford? Do we say we want to play Division III? Do we want to get our hopes up? Do we worry about getting our hopes, um, let down. My recommendation is to shoot as high as possible, right? Because if you have a 10-year-old, 11-year-old, 12-year-old, 13-year-old, and they want to play at a really high-level program and they fall short of that, they might still play Division III, they might still play at a solid Division I program, they might go to Stanford. But that's okay, because like, that's always going to be some degree. The player who goes to Stanford and is the number one in that program, they might be trying to be a PGA Tour player. Or they might be trying to be one of the top 10 or the number 1 player in the world, right? So I always recommend shooting for bigger goals. And you can look at a guy like Tiger Woods, you know, it's like many refer to him as, you know, as the GOAT, you know, he's the greatest golfer ever, but he was shooting for Jack Nicklaus. And ultimately, barring a miracle, he's fallen short of that, right? But he's still, you know, he's still accomplished a very high level. So I always recommend wherever we're going, we wanna shoot to somewhat past what we think that we can do, and that is going to organize our effort in, in a way that gives us a high probability of achieving a decent level of success. It's just my recommendation here. And though that's why I always recommend, if you're in between, if you're not sure, aim for Division 1. And if, you know, if you fall to Division 3, okay, fine. But if you look at Division 3 and say, oh well, you know, I think I can play Division 3, well, you know, we have a few bad bombs, we just didn't quite get that figured out, now we don't even play college golf. And you end up doing whatever else you end up doing in college, right? Um, so the average player, uh, average recruit Division I player, um, this might adjust a little bit, but this is, this is gonna be pretty dang close, is about -3.5. And so that, that's just kind of like where we're headed, right? That's where we want to get to generally. You might need to be a little bit better, a little bit worse than that depending on what your goals are, if you're a little bit more granular, but That's what we're looking for. Now real quick, what's scoring differential? Scoring differential, um, you can see over here, and if you go to this page you can really dig into it, um, that's how most players are ranked, um, that's the majority of how that they're ranked. So they're ranked based on scoring differential, they're ranked on the difficulty of the golf courses, and they're ranked on how they finish. How they finish is the least important piece of information, but it's the thing that most parents and kids get fixated on. They're like, oh, I, I finished top 5, and it's like, no one cares, doesn't matter. What you should be focusing on is your scores and, you know, how difficult that golf course was and how you played. That fundamentally, like, thank God that that is actually how this works, that it's as simple as just like, if your junior golfer improves, they get ranked and then they improve, that will be reflected in the ranking. It doesn't matter how everybody else is doing. So that's why I always say, like, focus— your junior golfer needs to learn to focus on themselves, um, in their game. They need to focus on what they need to do that they they don't need to worry about the rest of the field. It's relevant. But scoring differential is just a representation of the average score versus the difficulty of the golf course, right? And it has the biggest impact on rankings, like I said. So the equation is essentially your goal scoring differential plus your average improvement times the number of years until they're a junior. So if you go back into your, uh, your middle school math here, we've got our PEMDAS, um, to be able to do this. But that gives them their ideal scoring differential, right? And so the goal would be— I'm sorry, here— average improvement for most players is, again, just starting at average, 1.18 shots per year. And our goal is -3.5. And we have however many years until they're a freshman, right? Or how many years until they've accomplished that goal, how many years they've accomplished until they've gotten recruited. So where should they be right now? This is the ideal current scoring differential. So if you have a freshman and they have these goals, right, if they had a scoring differential of 0.04, then awesome, don't change anything. Like they can just cruise and they're probably going to accomplish their goals. Like congratulations, you're in a really good spot. If you want to achieve beyond that, amazing. But this is just for average Division I, super confident we're going to get recruited. That's where you should be. And so you can kind of see here right away the importance of being ranked, because if you're not ranked, you don't know, right? I can— you can guesstimate, um, you can say, hey, well, I think we're here, but we don't want to live in that. We don't want to live in fantasy world where, you know, we think we have a scoring average 76, we have a scoring average of 80. We want to just go out there and know. So again, either comment below if you can't find it, but there are other videos on my channel that go over how to get ranked. I think that the video is literally titled How to Get Ranked. So It's just super, super important. Um, so know where your child's at so you can figure this out and say, are they ahead of pace or behind pace? And that'll really help you set expectations appropriately. Now the next thing is we can really play with these numbers. Um, I don't like numbers as a concrete thing to be like, this is how it is and super rigid. The reason numbers are really useful is we can play with them. We can mold them into something that actually tells us something and kind of help us understand emotionally what we're going to need to do and what's realistic and how we can kind of play with this stuff. So when I work with students, they improve by about 2.7 shots per year. This is how I evaluate myself as a coach. I don't look at like how cool the golf swings or how many wins do we have, all that stuff. Like, that's a cool marketing headline, um, but at the end of the day, as a coach, I view it as I'm selling parents and junior golfers shots off their scores. If I sell— if I help them improve, that's what's happened. They have fewer shots per round of golf. It, it's literally that simple. If I hit— tell me, hit the ball further, it's so that you have fewer shots per round. If I hit— help you to hit the ball better, fewer shots per round. All of those things should equate to that. If I help you hit the ball better but we get worse, well, either somewhere in there I've done you a disservice because either we've prioritized the wrong thing or we're not actually doing what we think that we're doing, which is, you know, hit the ball better, right? And so again, we can take the same math here. We can say 2.71 shots per year, and again, we have the same goal and we have the same number of years until we accomplish that goal. Well, now we can have a scoring differential of 4.63. So again, as a freshman, gives you a little bit more wiggle room there. We might be a little bit underdeveloped where we might need to be on average, Um, but there's still hope. And if you're in this situation, you're like, oh, that really changes the game, and you want a little bit more help, you want to dig into this a little bit deeper as well, um, go to the link in my bio. It'll help you understand a little bit more about how the recruiting process works overall. Some of this stuff will be, um, reminders, um, but that's really important as well. So just go ahead, do that. If you want to look at working with me again, there'll be an opportunity to do that as well. But no pressure whatsoever. I'm just here to help you guys understand this process a little bit better. And if you guys do want help them, then obviously I provide that. So moral of the story is it pays to start early. Uh, this is one of my students, Ben. He's 10 years old. This is going to be really, really easy for him. He's already, you know, out there competing. He's playing well in tournaments. He's competing against 12-year-olds, 11-year-olds, kids that are older than him, hit the ball further than him. So he has the opportunity to go out there, hone his skills for a very long period of time, and it's just— it's not a very stressful process. So another one of my students, Sophia, she's 14, and again, just had the opportunity to compete at an early age, and she's just got a lot of time to improve and develop her game. There's no real pressure on her to get to a certain point just because she's given herself enough time. And it's another one of my students, Matt Hull. He started, you know, working on his game, really focusing in right when— about when he was about 12. And so now he's playing in tournaments and shooting, you know, pretty 10 under par, 8 under par, you know, 66, 65, you know, those kinds of scores. And that really just, you know, it pays to start early. Um, so I— if I can just implore you on one thing, start early. Give your child enough time because the, the only variables you have in this, this math equation are your goal, which I don't encourage you to change, right? Because we don't want to start just lowering our goals because that change— it's not the only variable we're changing. Right? It also impacts the effort that we're going to put in and, and the necessary decisions to get there, right? So we're not changing that variable. Well, then we also have the amount of time we have until we can accomplish that. So that's only shrinking, that's only making this equation even harder, right? So starting today, committing to do this today, if you do nothing else, go to Junior Golf Scoreboard, build a schedule of ranked tournaments so you can have this done, right? You can have that information, at least know where you stand, and you can run this equation. Okay, cool. We just stand pat. What's going to happen? Where are we going to end up? And is that acceptable to us, right? And if you look at that and you say no, it's not acceptable, then the last variable that you can change is can we improve faster? What can we do to improve faster than average? And I didn't go into in this video, you can also use that to start evaluating the investments that you decide to make or not make when you're helping your child improve. So if you look at, um, you know, should we buy a TrackMan? Should we buy a GC Quad? Should we go to this tournament or that tournament? You can actually run it through this lens as well. I'll probably do another video on that, but that is this one. So it's just make the most of the time you have. It's only shrinking, and that, that's just— if your child wants to do it, give them the opportunity. I can't stress that enough. If you enjoyed this video, if this is helpful for you to kind of clarify this using some numbers, using some math to actually get really scientific about here's exactly what they need to do, um, just in an understandable way— if it was helpful for you, please like this video. It helps push the video out to more people in the algorithm. And subscribe to the channel. Thanks so guys, and I'll see you in the next one.