The life of the nomadic tour pro is hardly glamorous. For some, the world of the professional golfer is viewed as a direct path from elite, high-profile colleges to the world of courtesy cars and private jets on the PGA Tour. The truth is that’s an infrequent path.
For Aaron Cockerill, the path to success has been more meandering. After all, does a golfer who lists himself as “frequent flyer, professional walker and receipt collector” on his Twitter bio sound like someone making buckets of money as one of the elite golfers in the world?
But the truth is, maybe more now than ever, Cockerill, from Stony Mountain just outside Winnipeg, is one of the world’s best. Playing through the messy world of the pandemic, Cockerill sits at No. 295 in the world, which is solid considering in 2018 he was closer to 2,000. And though he might make headlines in his home country for reasons he’d rather not – more on that later – lately he’s getting attention for his golf, even if it is in places half a world away from his Manitoba hometown.
The traditional route of the North American pro, especially Canucks, is to go to a U.S. college, play mini-tours and PGA Tour Canada, eventually moving to the Korn Ferry Tour and (hopefully) land a coveted spot on the PGA Tour. That’s how it started for Cockerill, who played one year at Texas A&M-Commerce and switched to the University of Idaho before heading to the Mackenzie Tour, toiling across Canada trying to make the move to the next level. It wasn’t glamorous – unless your idea of the glamorous life is making $16,000 a year playing across Canada, hoping some local family will pity you enough to allow you to sleep in their guest bedroom. That’s the reality Cockerill faced, and he battled it out across Canada over four summers. That’s when he looked at options.
Cockerill wasn’t able to leave in time and found himself trapped in the country while his wife, Chelsea, tweeted at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for help extricating her husband.
When the PGA Tour changed its qualifying school so a golfer couldn’t play his way immediately to golf’s highest level, some enterprising types started considering alternatives. Americans Brooks Koepka and Peter Uihlein went to Europe in the hopes of jump-starting their careers, and it worked. And that’s where Cockerill headed in 2019, going through two rounds of qualifying school, eventually landing a spot on the Challenge Tour, the feeder system for the DP World Tour, formerly known as the European Tour. A year later he made the jump to Europe’s top tour, which is where he plays today.
Though he may not have the profile of Canadians such as Adam Hadwin, Mackenzie Hughes or Corey Conners, all of whom once toiled on PGA Tour Canada, Cockerill, now 30, continues to get better. Though he has had strong finishes – a T4 in the Joburg Open in 2020 – until recently he’s been what many would call a journeyman. It is an unflattering term for those who are among the best in the world at what they do, but with Cockerill it means traveling throughout Europe and Africa with middle-of-the-pack results – a tie for 17th at the D&D Real Czech Masters or heading to Kenya to finish 28th.
That changed this season, though it wasn’t initially why Cockerill drew attention. While all of golf has struggled with the pandemic, Cockerill, traveling with his caddie, managed to make it through what seemed like the worst of it. Then at the Joburg Open at the end of last November, he put up two solid opening rounds. That’s when the latest COVID-19 variant decided to show up in South Africa, creating a wild scramble to get out of the country in the face of quarantine mandates.
“At one point, Aaron was like, ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to get home for Christmas,’ ” Chelsea said at the time. But he did get back, returning home to Winnipeg a week later, though it meant he’d be away from the tour for almost three months as the world fought the latest omicron variant.
Since he did return to competition, Cockerill has played the best golf of his life. He tied for second at the Magical Kenya Open in March and finished T3 at the ISPS Handa Championship in Spain (which included a third-round 62), for the two biggest payouts of his career. That helped him move into 25th spot on the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai rankings.
Not every tournament is going to be a breakthrough, of course – Cockerill shot 80-74 in Spain’s Catalunya Championship to miss the cut last week – but progress is there, and the better he plays, the more opportunities will come his way.
Sure, playing in Europe means Cockerill won’t build the name recognition of his Canadian peers in North America, but he’s developing as a tour pro. He’s getting better against strong competition. And if Cockerill continues to improve, and finish higher on the leaderboards in places such as Qatar and Portugal, his European adventure might just lead him back home and onto the PGA Tour.
Top: Aaron Cockerill finished T3 at the 2022 ISPS Handa Championship.
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