{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
All of this year’s top 30 to 50 incoming senior Division I men’s college golf players should buy some notecards and, in their very best penmanship, send a note of sincere appreciation to the PGA Tour’s Brendan von Doehren.
Why? Because he, along with colleagues at the PGA Tour, have just introduced a new program that provides access to PGA Tour development tours. That access may well change the arc of their professional careers.
Announced on Monday, PGA Tour University will provide a gateway for the very best 15 college players to the professional game. As the adjacent story outlines, the top 15 players from a newly created PGA Tour University Ranking List after the spring NCAA Championships will be awarded status on the Korn Ferry Tour, the PGA Tour Latinoamérica, the Mackenzie Tour - PGA Tour Canada, and the PGA Tour Series - China.
The top five players will be exempt into all remaining open Korn Ferry events for the rest of the season, while Nos. 6-15 will become members of one of the international tours.
“I think it is an exciting new program and very smart and well thought out by the PGA Tour. It encourages student athletes to stay in school longer even if they are great athletes. Everybody wins."
Conrad Ray
There is one important caveat that could change the landscape of the college game: To gain this status, a player will have to have finished four years of college. It is a powerful carrot being offered here, and it is going to keep many youngsters from leaving college early to turn professional. This is music to the ears of college coaches and to Walker Cup team selectors going forward.
“This is a huge thing,” according to Oklahoma State men’s golf coach Alan Bratton, who was the 1994 college player of the year. “It’s a natural partnership between the PGA Tour and the college game. The beneficiaries should thank all the great college players who came before them in recent years and enjoyed quick success on the tour.”
Echoed Conrad Ray, a former Stanford player who now is the program’s head coach, “I think it is an exciting new program and very smart and well thought out by the PGA Tour. It encourages student athletes to stay in school longer even if they are great athletes. Everybody wins. It is also a great validation of college golf in general and the process of development that takes place during those important and formative years.”
Von Doehren is a genuine golf guy. He grew up in Seattle, the son of golf parents who have given their life to supporting the game, especially the junior game, in the Evergreen State. He grew up playing the game as a kid, becoming proficient enough to play collegiately at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. His sister, Emily, would play for Northern Arizona University and go on to become chief of staff at the USGA.
Upon graduating from Loyola Marymount in 2006, von Doehren landed at Pepperdine University, serving as an assistant coach for the men’s program while earning a master's degree in business administration at night. After a detour to Major League Soccer, he landed a job at the PGA Tour in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
He currently serves as senior director of tournaments and membership affairs for the Korn Ferry Tour, but while doing his day job, he took on a passion project: trying to help the elite American college players find a better way to gain access to the PGA Tour developmental circuits. For the better part of three years, he and his colleagues researched the idea, networked with college coaches and other observers of the college game and developed a viable plan.
Then he faced the enormous task of selling it to the PGA Tour, a member-based organization of professional players. He likely got unexpected help along the way from Matthew Wolff, who left school last June after two years at Oklahoma State and quickly won the PGA Tour's 3M Open. How could anyone in Ponte Vedra Beach argue with von Doehren’s vision after watching the reigning NCAA champion win a month after joining the tour?
The timing of the introduction of the program could not be better for certain players such as John Augenstein. Faced with an uncertain short-term future in the pro game due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Augenstein is returning to Vanderbilt for a fifth year and will be able to take advantage of this opportunity.
One thing likely will be different for the schoolboys who gain this status: The big guaranteed money from equipment manufacturers won’t be there to greet them. As a result of the COVID-19 situation, the marketing spend on newly minted professionals by big brand-name equipment and apparel marketers will shrink dramatically, if not entirely. This will come as a shock to the agent community and the elite graduating seniors who have been planning for this for several years. Wolff and his peers Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa will be the last college players to really cash in on the day they turn pro.
I have to believe that the forward-thinking Mike Whan, LPGA commissioner, will study PGA Tour University closely and figure how to apply it to the Symetra Tour and the Ladies European Tour. It’s just too good of an idea to apply only to the men’s side of the college game.
E-Mail jim