Why Your Child NEEDS To Get Ranked (Not What You Think)

All right, what's going on guys? In today's video, I'm going to be covering a topic that I just see come up all the time right now, and that is really understanding what your child needs to do to play Division 1 golf, what they need to do to play college golf, and really how all of this comes down to pretty basic math. And there's a lot of people out there who want to promote this idea, um, that you just need to work hard and, you know, if you're talented, like, things will work out. And I just can't express how much I disagree with that sentiment. A lot of times people look at me and they'll be like, oh, this guy's trying to like promote a system. You don't need a system, you just need to go out there and grind super hard. It's just honestly, it's moronic. Um, it's, it's really, really stupid. Um, hopefully you guys can kind of sense like, um, you know, how dumb I think that that is. Um, plain and simple, it's like saying, hey, I want to go to Harvard. Um, all right, cool, what do I need to do that? Oh, you just need to be smart. And like work hard. It's like, okay, cool, you got a 3.8, like whoop-de-doo, you're not getting in Harvard, right? You need to have that 4.0. You need to have those, you know, higher academics. You need to have good SAT scores. You can't just like— like even when it comes down to like the classes that you need to be in, like you're not getting into Harvard if you're starting in Algebra E as a freshman, you know? It's like you need— you need to make sure that you're going into college— or I'm sorry, into high school— or at least you're in like Geometry Honors or something like that, or maybe even you're in Algebra 2 Honors, right? You need to have things that jump off the page. And if you don't even know that that's a priority, guess what? You just don't prioritize it, or you prioritize it too late. Um, this happens to me all the time when I'm talking to families and they say, hey, you know, this, this seems like, you know, makes a lot of sense, but we're just not ready to make the sacrifices. Which, you know, to be fair, that's a real reason to, to do things or not do things, is just, you know, whether or not you're willing to endure the, the sacrifices that the people end up being successful are willing to endure. Um, you know, one of the most common places that comes up is being able to prioritize one sport over another, right? If we want everything, that's cool, you know. Um, but that doesn't mean we necessarily get everything that we want in the end, right? We're gonna have to make sacrifices one way or another. If we're willing to sacrifice excellence for variety, fair enough, right? That's a, that's something that you can make that assessment. And there are gonna be people out there who are gonna say, oh no, you're gonna ruin it. You're gonna make the game not fun. And that's not really my goal here. My goal is for you guys to have clarity because, you know, it's not fun spending a bunch of money on something, working super hard, being nowhere near your goal, thinking that you're close to your goal, and then ultimately being, like I said, nowhere close to it. And then being in a position to say, okay, cool, you know, like, where do we go from here, right? Like, um, you know, being in a position where you worked super, super hard and just turned out you're nowhere close and you didn't even know that, right? Right? I lived that. That's why I talk about this, you know? So I did the super hard work thing. People are going to be like, oh, you're not talented enough. Like, I started playing golf when I was 16. I was scratch by the time I was 17. I was pretty damn good, you know? But it's like, was I good enough? No. But I didn't have the context of even where I was. So here's what I want to do here in this video. Um, just want to set that up, make sure that's really clear. So if you guys are watching this video, um, and you're wondering like, hey, you know, like, should my kid take this seriously, or what point should they take this seriously? Um, this video is going to be profoundly, um, helpful Um, so let's go ahead and dig into it. So number one, this page, College Signings, shows all the players that recruited back in 2017. This is public information, so you can look at this yourself. And, you know, just look at this. Here's all the players that were recruited this past year. Here's where they're ranked in their class, right? And you can just go down the line. And sure, you know, like, there's a decent number of these kids who, you know, weren't necessarily ranked. I would encourage you to look at WAGGR as well, especially if you see these international players. But long story short, like you can see, it's pretty comprehensive. Majority of players who are getting recruited are ranked, right? So just like starting point number one, if you want to help your child play Division I golf, they need to be ranked. And if you want to know like how to do that, playing in the specific tournaments, I've got a link below, um, where you can get my whole tournament framework on how I actually go through this process for the students that I work with. You just get that, um, I think it's like, you know, $100, $150, um, whatever, well worth it just to save one tournament. Anyway, back into this. You can kind of see here there's kind of a range of, you know, players who end up getting recruited. I'm going to say that the range, you know, as far as Division I golf, somewhere around like 150, 100th in your class. Like, that's kind of— I'd say you're going to programs that people have heard of before. You know, so you got like Xavier, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Georgia Tech, Penn State, etc. Like, you can go in here and like sort by the type, the particular school that you want to go to. But again, just like, long story short, we're going to programs that we've heard of before. So here's what we can do next, and this is not as public information, but we can go over to Junior Golf Scoreboard, look at class of 2027, which is currently, you know, that, that junior class, and just say, okay, let's search and let's go to, you know, whatever players are ranked around that kind of 100 marker. And what we can do is just click into them. So it's like we can see, hey, we've got a scoring differential of -3. Just to be clear, -3. You guys can kind of see what that looks like. A scoring average about 72.8, and you know, we're playing golf courses that are pushing up towards 7,000 yards. We're not quite there yet, but we're pushing toward it, right? Um, you don't need to be one of those idiots who's like, oh well, Connor, like, you're shooting in the 70s, like, that's not good enough, or shooting the 70s amazing. Like, obviously you can see this is an average of 73. Are they shooting rounds in the 60s? Of course they are. It's like they're also shooting higher rounds. So it's like One of the things I always emphasize is just like, you want to look at the average rather than just like, you know, these extremes, right? That's why I'm never going to talk about like, oh, I helped a kid get 10 shots better in 3 months. It's just absurd. You know, it's like, yeah, you can say here's your worst score and here's your best score. And like, that's, you know, 10-shot gap. Sure. But it's like, that's, that's kind of dishonest. Um, you really want to look at how this average is progressing. It moves a lot slower than people think. So how do I know that? It's because I've looked at the data. So let's look at here. October 1st, -3.08. Obviously lower is better. October a year ago, -1.54, right? So we've improved by about, what is that, 1.5 shots? Okay, let's look at the year prior here. All right, so we went from -1.5 and we were at 2.5. right? So in that case, you know, we improved by about 4 shots. It was a pretty substantial jump for this player. Let's look at the year before that. So we're at 2.5 all the way back here. All right, we don't have exactly October, we're roughly around 7 here. Okay, cool. So in that case, we improved by about 5 shots, right? Pretty substantial progress there. And so the reason I'm kind of highlighting this is, number 1, if your child's not ranked, you have no clue on any of this stuff. Just like, to be like very frank here, it's like if your child is a freshman or a sophomore and they're not even ranked, and then you think to yourself, oh, let's put this off another year, um, this isn't going to work out for you. Like, it's just, it's just a very low probability thing. I don't say that to hurt your feelings. I'm not trying to ruin any dreams. I want to make sure you guys have reality. In the same way, if you say, hey, yeah, I finished my, uh, my freshman year with a 2.5 GPA, you know, like, you can still accomplish plenty of successful things in life. You're not going to Harvard. Like, that's just how it is, you know, unless you got like, I don't know, some ridiculous story. It's like, it's just not something you want to bet on here. So let's go pick up another player. Just again, random, all next to each other though. Another scoring average, 73.5. Average length of golf course, slightly longer. That's why this player is ranked slightly better even though their scoring average is slightly worse. So anyway, let's look at this player. All right. A year ago. So we're right here, we're at 3. A year ago we were at -1.2, so they improved by about a shot. So when you guys are looking at your child and saying, oh, I think they can improve by 10 shots or 5 shots in a year, that just doesn't happen. The average player I work with improves by about a little over 4 shots per— right now that's about how much Charlie Woods has improved over the last 3 years, and I'll show you guys Charlie Woods' stuff here in a second. Um, yeah, it's pretty substantial. Um, you know, average improvement. Now to be clear, that's an average. Some of the players I'm working with improve by less than that, some improve by way more than that. I'm not really going to talk about either one of those just because, again, you know, it's an average, right? And that's kind of the best way to think about these things. In the same way I'm talking about scoring averages, improvement averages, just what's probable to happen. Um, if that's something you want, you can kind of see just like as we go through these numbers, be like, hey, you know, 4 shots is pretty good, at least want to hear this guy out. Application below. I can go ahead and fill that out, make sure you're comfortable with everything, make sure your child's actually in a position where I can help them. They'll be able to schedule a call. So if that's something you're interested in, go ahead and fill that out. Or once again, if your child's not even ranked, go, go ahead and get my ranking framework or my tournament schedule framework. So year before that, 8.4, got down to -2. So honestly, this is a pretty crazy jump, and it's not even accurate. So it's like we had a drop-off here. So this player was ranked and then they weren't ranked for an extended period of time, and then they came back and they're at -2. Now, you know, that was about a 2-year period of time. I don't know what happened here. Um, and one of my biggest reasons for liking to have this ranking for a player is that we can actually model this out a lot easier. So if your child is, let's say they're a freshman and they have a scoring differential of 4, well, you can model out, hey, well, if we only improve by a shot per year, which is about average, you know, what's going to happen? What's probable to work out for us? Well, in 3 years, we're probable to be at a scoring differential of like 1. And if your goal— if their goal is to play Division 3, like, they're gonna be totally fine. Like, that works out, you know, scoring differential of 1, you know, that works for Division 3. They want to play Division 1 golf, it's probably not going to work out. So it allows you to make decisions, right? Say, hey, we need to, you know, put our foot on the gas. And maybe say, hey, you know, we don't want to invest in something like, you know, more, you know, specific program. We just want to keep grinding it out. At least you have the measurement on it to say like, okay, well, we were at 4, you know, a quarter ago and now it's at 4.2. Like, we haven't moved the needle at all. You've been working super hard, we're spending all this money, but it's not moving. Like, you want to be able to see that and then be able to say, okay, cool, like, we need to really kick it into high gear. And if that's not moving the needle, you know, you need to do something else. Hopefully that, that makes a lot of sense. All right, cool. Continuing on here, got another one, 71.9. Obviously we're playing shorter golf courses, right? So again, it's not a, you know, hard and fast thing of, oh, we have to play super long golf courses all the time, we can play shorter golf courses, like whatever. If you play shorter golf courses, you have to shoot better scores. Yeah, that's pretty much the basic idea here. Why do I talk about players playing longer golf courses as opposed to shorter ones? Well, if we play longer golf courses that are harder, we shoot better scores. It's just easier to get that number a lot lower versus this player is closer to a ceiling as far as scoring goes. There's not very many players who has a scoring average of like 7 or 68, you know, versus there are players who play 7,000 yards and have a scoring average of like 69.5 or something like that. So, um, anyway, let's look at this player. So right off the gate, we can kind of see bigger improvement, right? Negative 3.3. A year ago we were at let's just call it a 2 just for easy math. So improved by about 5 shots, pretty substantial. That's really good. Um, 5 shots is a lot. All right, cool. Year prior to that, right, so we were at 2. Year prior to that, we were at 5.6, right? So once again, we improved by about, you know, 3.5 shots, which again, still really, really good. Um, let's see if this is all— yeah, this is all continuity. Has continuity, I should say. And then I think we lose it here. All right, cool. So 14.3. So obviously we had a big jump here from September— oh, I was on September 7th of '23. Okay, cool. Yeah, so in this case, you— we had a pretty big jump. We went from 14 to 7. Now obviously, like, that, you know, that, that's certainly possible. Let's say your child isn't playing golf at a high level, they're not taking it very seriously, and they start taking it seriously. Or let's say they get bigger and stronger, they start hitting it further. This is very possible, right? Um, at the same time though, you can kind of see it slows down, right? So this is something we want to really aim for, like consistency here. Let me go ahead and pull up, uh, Charlie Woods. I think he might be on the first page of this one now, just kind of cap this one off here. Let's see here, I just saw him a second ago. Charlie Woods. All right, cool. So let's look at Charlie again. Scoring average 73. Longer golf courses. Maybe they know what they're doing, I don't know. Um, October, -5.49, right? So let's look at a year— -1.48, right? About 4 shots. All right, year prior to that, we went from -1.48 to 1.13. So in that case, it was about 3 shots. Year prior to that, 8.78, got all the way to 2.19 or 2.18, so about 6 shots. So again, we end up around that kind of average of about 4-ish shots per year. Um, and so obviously, you know, exceptional circumstances for Charlie. Obviously shot some incredible scores and You know, now he's one of the best players in his class, but all that comes from consistent improvement over a long period of time. Notice he didn't just get ranked yesterday, right? He's been ranked for a long time period here. Maybe him and his dad know what they're doing. All right. So hopefully this makes sense. Um, just to kind of show you a couple players, um, you know, that I've worked with, this is like a reference point here. If I could spell names correctly, right? I need to actually get the class right. Just a couple of students that I've worked with. All right, boom. Jackson, really great student here. Started working together in January, 8.41. Now he's down to 4.49, just about whatever that is, 10 months later, 9 months later of working together. Pretty substantial improvement. Um, let's look at another student I worked with this past year. Started working with Harris this past year, so we started working together in July, 7.48. Now he's all the way down to -1.1. So again, pretty substantial, um, improvement there, almost 7 shots over the course of a year. Um, I could keep going here. Let's just go ahead and You know, let's, let's look at, let's look at one of the more recent students. Pull up a girl. Here's Adeline. Adeline, we started working together, I want to say it was in June here or July, this middle number. So one of the things that we did, number one, we got her ranked. Once again, link below if you don't like your child's not ranked, or if they need to play in better tournaments, or you suspect they need to play in better tournaments, or maybe you're playing in dozens of tournaments every single year and it's just like you don't know if it's doing anything. Again, it's only like $150. Well worth it to go purchase that just to make sure everything's solid, um, and just make sure you can track this stuff. But anyway, start off in July, she started off here 0.48, now she's at -0.21. She's gonna be in a great spot for Division 1 recruiting, right? Obviously very, very talented player. A few tweaks makes a huge difference over a relatively short period of time. So anyway, long story short, kind of sum up this video, my main point here is that if you want to help your child play Division 1 golf, you want to help your child play a high level of golf, you need to go in eyes wide open. And I think most people that critique my stuff just don't even watch these videos and don't even like see like how straightforward this is. I mean, it's just like, it's plain and obvious that it's like Okay, where we're trying to get to is very clearly defined. Where we're at right now can be very clearly defined. And so all we need to do is measure that and be deliberate about the stuff we put in, right? We put in stuff, right? We buy new clubs, we get lessons, we go out and practice. We want to know, like, what are the things we're putting in? We want to quantify that. They want to say, I'm getting these things out, I'm getting better scores out of this, I'm I'm getting improvement or I'm not. And in, in my own opinion, part of the reason that I've been able to get great results with my students is not because I'm so smart or I'm so amazing at golf. And one of the things people always ask me is, let's go, where'd you play college golf? I'm just like, I started playing golf when I was 16. I was dead on arrival. Like, it wasn't happening for me no matter how much talent I had. Um, and also I didn't, you know, I didn't understand this process. You know, since then I've been able to work with, you know, quite a few kids. I've been able to work with with other very good coaches that I'd be able to work on my own. Collectively helped about 10 players get recruited, right? Majority of those now are to Division I programs. We started off as a little bit more Division II, Division III, a little bit more of a mix, more edge cases, right? So I've gotten more clear about how this process works. When I started this thing off, average players improved by about 2.7 shots. Now, once again, it's a little over 4 shots per year. And so all that to say is if we're following a process where you can quantify what we're putting in, what we're getting out, we're able to systematically improve. That's kind of like the basic idea. Either it makes sense to you or it doesn't. If it does make sense, once again, application below, um, fill that out. We can talk about it. We can look at your child's specific situation, see if this process will work for them. And again, this isn't wedded to like only, you know, it's like obviously if your child's going to play Division 1 golf, it's a lot easier to do this, you know, full transparency. But even say, hey, we want to just improve, we want to play Division 2, we want Division 3, the, the logic still works here of just saying, hey, we wanted to do more deliberate stuff. Hopefully everyone can kind of like get on board with the idea of just like, hey, if your kid goes out there and does a bunch of random stuff and just works hard, you know, maybe if they did a little bit less but they were more focused and they had, you know, better execution and they were more clear about the stuff that they needed to do, they could probably get better results faster. That's kind of, again, basic idea here. So hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. Hopefully it makes sense to you, just like why this is so important. Once again, if your child's not ranked, again, resources below for you. So Hopefully you guys— this was helpful for you guys, and I'll talk to you guys in the next one.