GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA | When his 4-foot par putt found the middle of the hole, Ricky Castillo offered a fist pump that contained three years’ worth of emotion.
That’s how long it had been since Castillo, the No. 1 amateur in the world in the fall of 2020, won a golf tournament. Almost exactly three years after winning the Florida Gators Invitational as a freshman on his home turf at the Mark Bostick Golf Course, Castillo got back into the winner’s circle as a senior at the same event, winning a playoff over Georgia Southern’s Mason Williams on Sunday afternoon.
Immediately after the putt dropped, Castillo was mobbed by his Gator teammates before he embraced his girlfriend and parents. Everyone, especially Castillo, had been waiting for this moment. It didn’t come easily, either. Castillo blew a late two-stroke lead, including a bogey on the final hole of regulation, having to sweat it out as Williams missed a 10-foot birdie try for the victory. Castillo, a senior from Yorba Linda, California, capitalized on a big break in the playoff when Williams went over the green and couldn’t salvage par.
“This meant a lot to me,” Castillo told Global Golf Post a few minutes after the win. “I mean, it's been a lot of ups and downs over the past three years.”
It’s been difficult to explain Castillo’s enigmatic career for the Gators, but it is yet another example of golf being undefeated and margins among the top players growing thinner by the year.
He came out of Southern California as a blue-chip prospect who had twice been an AJGA Rolex First-Team All-American. He narrowly missed making the 2019 U.S. Walker Cup team as a high school senior after reaching the round of 16 in the U.S. Amateur and the semifinals in the Western Amateur.
Castillo’s freshman season quickly backed up the hype. Castillo posted the lowest stroke average in program history, won the Phil Mickelson Award for the nation’s top freshman and was a unanimous first-team All-American. He was scorching hot by the time the pandemic hit, and he easily could have won the Ben Hogan Award and an NCAA Championship without COVID-19 wiping out the remainder of the college golf season.
That summer, Castillo – a wiry player who is known as a short-game savant – qualified for the U.S. Open and reached the semifinals of the Western Amateur for the second year in a row.
"My mentality sometimes was not in the right place. I’ve had a lot of struggles, a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. But you know, I went back to just really being focused on putting my head down, working hard, and knowing that things will happen for me. And it ended up working out for me.”
Ricky Castillo
He was the best amateur in the world shortly after GGP profiled him in August of 2020. It was almost a shame that he couldn’t take that freshman form right into professional golf.
But then golf got hard. It always does, right? Castillo began to struggle with focus and wanting to win so badly that he stopped having fun. By his lofty standards – and despite a 4-0 record during the Walker Cup at Seminole – his 2021 and 2022 calendar years were a struggle.
Castillo would pop up with a top-five finish in a big event, flashing the form of his freshman year. A tournament later, he would be outside of the top 50. Months would go by without contending. Last summer, after a tie for 61st in the NCAA Championship, he needed a hard reset – Castillo went away from competitive golf for two months and instead played casual golf at Alta Vista Golf Course, his home track in Yorba Linda.
He hadn’t fallen apart, but he also wasn’t the same player he was. Coming into this week, he had descended to No. 27 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.
It’s not what anyone was expecting. But for Castillo, he wasn’t fixated on rankings. More than making physical changes, he needed to reignite his focus and get back into form mentally.
“It’s been really difficult,” Castillo said on Sunday. “My mentality sometimes was not in the right place. I’ve had a lot of struggles, a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. But you know, I went back to just really being focused on putting my head, working hard, and knowing that things will happen for me. And it ended up working out for me.”
Before this win, Castillo recently lost a playoff at the Sea Best Invitational to teammate Fred Biondi, another senior who is gunning for professional golf status through the PGA Tour University program. Biondi, a Brazilian, came into this past week No. 3 in the standings; Castillo was No. 16, on the bubble of receiving status to PGA Tour Latinoamérica or PGA Tour Canada.
I brought that up to Castillo, thinking his attention must be on that ranking. Where he finishes will dictate a lot about how his pro career will start, and he does intend for it to start after the NCAA Championship finishes in the spring.
He paused for a moment. Rankings sometimes had been too important to him.
But golf isn’t played by a computer. It’s played by humans.
“It can be difficult when you're just focusing on numbers and rankings and stuff like that,” Castillo said. “When I get out here, I’m just focusing on getting 1 percent better every day. It’s just what’s kind of keeping me going right now.”
In a game as difficult as golf, that is all you can ask for.
E-MAIL SEAN
Top: Despite struggling for much of 2021 and 2022, Ricky Castillo had a 4-0 record at the 2022 Walker Cup.
Grant Halverson, USGA