The Web.com Tour just completed play in the third-leg of the Web.com Tour Finals on the Scarlet Course at the Ohio State University Golf Club. Twenty-one-year-old Justin Thomas earned his first professional win and joined a long list of 20-something winners on the Web.com Tour this season.
Question: What do Bud Cauley, Adam Hadwin and Justin Thomas all have in common besides being the winners of the first three Web.com Tour Finals events?
Answer: All of these three winners are under the age of 30. Hadwin is 26 and Cauley is 24 years old.
The Web.com Tour, as well as, all of golf is seeing a tremendous youth movement.
Yes, we see some familiar names on the Web.com Tour’s leaderboards every week, but the majority of the winners are coming directly from college or are under the age of 29.
This has become a trend in all of golf not just on the Web.com Tour.
Lexi Thompson (Kraft Nabisco) and Hyo Joo Kim (Evian), both teenagers won major championships on the LPGA Tour in 2014. Lydia Ko won twice on the LPGA Tour, is ranked No 3 in the world and is a 17-year-old rookie.
The average age of the field for the PGA Tour Championship last week at East Lake was 31. Over half of the 29-man field was under the age of 30.
Billy Horschel became the youngest winner ever of the FedEx Cup at the age of 27. Chris Kirk, the old man of the group at 29 years of age, Rory McIlroy (25), Rickie Fowler (25), Jason Day (26) and Russell Henley (25) all contended last week.
Carlos Ortiz, a Web.com Tour rookie, fresh out of the University of North Texas won three tournaments and leads the Web.com Tour money list, is just 23 years old.
Other Web.com Tour winners in 2014 include, Jon Curren (27), Andrew Putnam (25), Blayne Barber (24), Max Homa (23), Sebastian Cappelan (24), Martin Piller (29), Zack Sucher (28), Tony Finau (25) and Roger Sloan (27).
The youngest of these is Justin Thomas, who won the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship and punched his ticket to the PGA Tour.
In his first year on the Web.com Tour, he had seven top-10 finishes and is fourth in the Web.com Tour priority rankings. In addition, he posted one top-10 finish and made the cut in three events on the 2014 PGA Tour.
Thomas had to survive a playoff with a seasoned veteran, Richard Sterne, who had a great year on the European Tour in 2013.
These young players are receiving excellent training in college and are coming through the Web.com Tour and onto the PGA Tour ready to compete. They are secure and confident with their game and their learning curve is very steep.
The current structure in golf with the length of the schedule and the difficulty of the courses make endurance and strength a priority for good scoring.
You could even see 25-year-old Rory McIlroy wearing down at the Tour Championship last week.
One of the things that Tiger Woods commented on in his media session on Monday was his lack of endurance and strength when he tried to return to competition at Firestone in August.
Golf has become a young man’s game.
These young guys are going to make it even more difficult for Tiger to get his five majors.