Earlier this semester, Gordon Sargent and his Vanderbilt team headed to their home course for an intrasquad scrimmage. It was 35 degrees with a healthy wind and no sunlight to be found, a bitter day when most Nashville residents were huddled in their respective homes.
Facing a 1-down deficit in his nine-hole alternate-shot match – and with everyone on the nation’s top-ranked team ready to get back into the warmth of indoors as soon as possible – Sargent came to a do-or-die 220-yard second shot on a par-5. He hit a 5-iron to 2 feet, extending the match. His foursome replayed the same hole in the playoff, and he had virtually the same shot into the green once again. He hit that approach to 4 feet.
“Good players can't hit that same shot twice,” Vanderbilt senior Matthew Riedel said. “Only great players can do that on a day where we are wearing all these layers. He did it and just thought nothing about it. It's just one of those moments where you realize he can really hit any shot he wants to.”
Sargent, a 20-year-old sophomore on the Commodores golf team and the No. 1 amateur in the world, has inspired a lot of similar stories and accolades over the years. Vanderbilt head man Scott Limbaugh, who spent five seasons as an assistant at Alabama, says Sargent is in the same talent bracket as former Crimson Tide golfer Justin Thomas. And Sargent’s teammates are not just expecting him to make the cut in this week’s Masters. They think it’s realistic that he could contend for a top-15 finish among golf’s best, on the game’s brightest stage.
"I think it just gives you a lot of confidence to know that the people at Augusta National want you to play in their tournament. It kind of just showed me that I have the game to compete at any level.”
Gordon Sargent
These are the lofty ambitions for Sargent, the first amateur to receive a Masters special exemption since Aaron Baddeley in 2000 and the first American, professional or amateur, to receive one. Sargent earned it, at least in part, when he navigated through a four-man playoff to capture the NCAA Championship last spring, but his overwhelming playing résumé made the decision a relatively simple one for the Masters.
Sargent thought it may have been a prank when “Augusta National Golf Club” showed up on his caller ID a day after New Year’s. Now on the eve of his first start in a professional event, the moment is starting to sink in.
“At the time I got the invite, we still had four or five college events until the Masters, so obviously it's kind of creeping in your mind, but I hadn't necessarily focused on it,” Sargent told Global Golf Post last week. “And now it’s definitely in my mind now that I’ve done prep work. I think it just gives you a lot of confidence to know that the people at Augusta National want you to play in their tournament. It kind of just showed me that I have the game to compete at any level.”
None of this comes as a surprise for those who have followed Sargent’s story. He grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, the son of a talented amateur golfer. Seth Sargent, a University of Georgia graduate and the vice president of a construction company, once was among the top amateurs in Alabama and still plays out of Shoal Creek Golf Club. He has recorded some top-10 finishes in marquee mid-am events such as the George C. Thomas Invitational but recently has slowed down on the competition front. Sargent’s mother, Monica, is a University of Tennessee alumna and a longtime corporate law attorney. His parents took an involved and supportive, yet even-keeled, approach as their two boys, Gordon and Thomas, got involved with the game. Academics were a high priority throughout their childhood, and they weren’t allowed to sacrifice school in favor of golf. Gordon carried a 4.1 GPA throughout his time at Mountain Brook High School, and he chose Vanderbilt in part because of the rigorous academics.
“I think a large part of me fell in love with the game because it was not forced by my parents at all,” said Sargent, who quit baseball after sixth grade to focus on golf. “They kind of introduced me to it, and after that they just let me kind of decide what I wanted to do.”
“It was always Gordon kind of writing his own journey,” said Limbaugh, a fellow Alabama native who has known Sargent since he was a young kid showing up at University of Alabama golf camps. “If you watch him and his parents at golf tournaments, their identity is not in his golf game.”
Sargent, who developed his skills at the Country Club of Birmingham in addition to Shoal Creek, dominated state competition and compiled a stellar junior career, which included being a three-time Rolex Junior All-American. He came into Vanderbilt as the No. 2 recruit in the country for the class of 2021, fresh off a summer during which he became the youngest Alabama State Amateur winner in history (setting a tournament scoring record along the way), finished runner-up in the Western Amateur, reached match play in the U.S. Amateur and had a run to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Junior Am.
After struggling with a wild-right miss with his driver in his first semester on campus, Sargent self-corrected to missing only the fairway 10 yards right of center instead of 30 yards offline. With that, he transformed into a college star. He was a consensus first-team all-American, captured the Phil Mickelson Award for national freshman of the year and was a Haskins Award finalist. It was the first time a freshman won the NCAA individual title since Jamie Lovemark in 2007.
Sargent won twice during the spring semester and has continued on an absurd run of consistent play. In his past 14 college starts, Sargent has not finished outside the top seven. Three of those have been wins – and Vanderbilt, the favorite to win the NCAA team championship this spring, is playing against the best fields in college golf every time. Outside of Texas Tech’s Ludvig Åberg, nobody can claim that level of play.
“He’ll be hitting it as far as anybody at the Masters next week, period. It’s hard not to stop and watch it. I mean, it's that kind of freakish speed. But while the speed is awe-inspiring, my god, he also rolls it so good, too.”
Scott Limbaugh
“We're seriously in the hands of a prodigy almost,” Riedel said. “He's one of those guys that has expectations to be world No. 1 as a professional, and you just can never really say that for almost any players in college golf.”
Any conversation around Sargent starts with his mind-boggling power. His cruising altitude is 185-mph ball speed, but he went after one recently and set a personal record: 197 mph of ball speed and 132 mph of clubhead speed. These are astronomical numbers, especially for a kid who started high school as a 5-foot-7-inch freshman with disproportionately large hands and feet before hitting a five-inch growth spurt. The PGA Tour leader for clubhead speed this season sits at 126 mph, for those wondering.
During his victory in the national championship, Sargent almost exclusively hit 3-iron off each tee. He needed only two drivers per round on the nearly 7,300-yard Raptor Course at Grayhawk Golf Club.
“He’ll be hitting it as far as anybody at the Masters next week, period,” Limbaugh said. “It’s hard not to stop and watch it. I mean, it's that kind of freakish speed. But while the speed is awe-inspiring, my God, he also rolls it so good, too.”
Plenty of college players have unleashed preposterous swing speeds before, but there is another layer to Sargent. It’s why he just signed with Excel Sports for his management – the same agency that represents Tiger Woods, Collin Morikawa and Thomas – and already has a partnership with Titleist/FootJoy.
He is described as Jordan Spieth-like in his precocious nature, locking in to his practice routine like a veteran pro. He is a range rat with a structured plan, eschewing casual rounds with teammates and spending very little time on the course when he isn’t in competition. Limbaugh tells him to watch Scottie Scheffler, reminding Sargent that his otherworldly ball-striking affords him the luxury of winning golf tournaments despite not having his best stuff. Accepting that certain approach shots will finish 25 feet from the hole is the patience Scheffler shows, and Sargent has specifically worked to develop that ability.
In his freshman year, Limbaugh thought Sargent was too hard on himself and would take himself out of contention because of it. But after a recent tournament this past month, the two rode home together and Limbaugh told him how proud he was to see so much improvement.
That is Sargent: polished, polite and looking for any minute detail he can improve.
“He’s a little bit like Justin Thomas where he's not a very happy guy when he's not hitting the ball the way he wants to,” Limbaugh said. “He's got high, high, high expectations for how he's hitting the ball. And, you know, when it's not that way he wants to figure it out. He's really good at doing that, which I think is a great sign of somebody that's got the kind of potential to be one of the top players in the world.
“I think this week, it will be eye-opening for him. He will realize he belongs out there.”
Sargent’s long-term future is exciting, but he knows better than to look ahead. During our conversation, he repeatedly mentioned his primary goal of Vanderbilt winning a team national championship. And despite being well on his way to achieving PGA Tour status through the PGA Tour University Accelerated program, Sargent intends to stay all four years at Vanderbilt. Limbaugh laughs off this notion, saying, “I don't live in the fairytale world.” Sargent needs only 20 points by the end of his junior year to earn tour status – he already has reached 12 points, and he can get four more points this week at Augusta (one for playing, one for making the cut and two for a top-20 finish).
“At the moment I'm still planning to stay all four years, so I think (the Masters) will just kind of show where I can get better,” Sargent said. “That is one thing at Vanderbilt we've kind of all emphasized; just because you've had a bunch of success doesn't mean you're above the standards at all. I know that the guys on the team are going to be picking my brain about what I saw that week from the pros, and I'm looking forward to bringing the information that I learned back to the team and just kind of helping us all get better.”
Sargent will embrace the experience this week. He has potential practice rounds in the works with Thomas, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm. He’ll be staying in the Crow’s Nest on Monday night after the amateur dinner. And his brother, Thomas, will caddie during Wednesday’s Par 3 Contest.
“He's probably working on his shot for hole No. 9 right now,” Sargent said jokingly.
The betting odds may not have younger brother hitting the green, but there is more than a chance that he’ll get more swings at it in the future.
Sargent is that good. This week, his introduction to the game’s highest level begins.
E-MAIL SEAN
Top: Gordon Sargent is the first American, professional or amateur, to receive a Masters special exemption.
PHOTO courtesy of vanderbilt university