Convergence.
That’s the word spoken by Stanford University men’s coach Conrad Ray. A convergence of issues and factors has combined to change the elite amateur game dramatically and quickly, to the point that the landscape is unrecognizable to longtime followers of amateur golf.
It began a few years ago with the USGA’s effort to modernize the Rules of Golf, including amateur status. Reacting to the rise of social media and the inability of the governing body to manage amateur golfers’ behavior on various social platforms, the USGA bowed to reality and loosened the regulations defining amateur golfers, especially regarding money. These new regulations took effect on January 1, 2022.
Just six months earlier, the idea of amateur athletes of any stripe being paid for the use of their name, image, and likeness (known as NIL) came to be. The NCAA approved an interim rule that allowed student-athletes (the NCAA’s preferred descriptor for scholarship athletes) to monetize their NIL rights. This was triggered by long-standing litigation that targeted the NCAA, which the college governing body lost, opening the door to athletes being paid. A few male college golfers are thought to be earning almost $1 million apiece in NIL money.
Traditionalists might cringe at that fact, but one downstream trend that is developing is that NIL money is keeping college players in school longer than they might otherwise. Vanderbilt’s Gordon Sargent, the 2022 NCAA champion and a former world No. 1-ranked amateur, could have turned professional after his sophomore season in college upon meeting the milestones in the PGA Tour University Accelerated program for underclassmen. Instead, he chose to play two more seasons at Vandy and will graduate in the spring before taking up his PGA Tour card.
Division I power conferences agreed to pay college athletes directly, at about $20 million per school annually beginning with the 2025-26 academic year. The money, ... will directly benefit Division I men’s and women’s golf teams.
Closely related to the NIL development was the creation of the transfer portal. Athletes sought and won the same freedom as their coaches enjoyed to switch schools without penalty. The practice has become widespread in college football and basketball, but it also is happening in golf.
The PGA Tour grew interested in men’s college golf by introducing its PGA Tour University ranking system in 2020. It provides the top male collegiate players with a pathway to the PGA Tour right out of school. The program has been helpful to the college game and to the PGA Tour, with immediate success stories such as Ludvig Åberg. It’s here to stay, but not everyone loves it.
John Yerger, the tournament director of the Sunnehanna Amateur, says the tour’s pathway should include summer amateur results such as his annual June stop in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He noted that Anthony Delisanti of tiny Valparaiso University won the prestigious Northeast Amateur this summer yet competes at a collegiate level on the fringes of PGA Tour U. Yerger points to the DP World Tour’s Global Amateur Pathway, which awarded China’s Wenyi Ding a 2025 tour exemption in large part because of his victory at the Southern Amateur.
“How do you explain why summer amateur golf is recognized by one ranking system but not the other?” Yerger said.
In 2021, a collective of seven well-established men’s summer championships, including the Sunnehanna, the Northeast and the Southern, created the Elite Amateur Golf Series. The idea was to cooperate and collaborate to elevate the amateur game. The rewards to winners are impressive, including PGA Tour event exemptions, and the USGA embraced it with local exemptions for the U.S. Open and full exemptions for the U.S. Amateur. In 2024, a women’s equivalent debuted, and it could prove to be more impactful than the men’s initiative.
Most recently, because of a multibillion-dollar settlement of several lawsuits against the NCAA, the Division I power conferences agreed to pay college athletes directly, at about $20 million per school annually beginning with the 2025-26 academic year. The money, which will come from TV rights deals and boosters’ contributions, will directly benefit Division I men’s and women’s golf teams.
“Uncertain” is how Stanford’s Ray characterizes the current environment. “I remind myself to focus on what I can control and not lose too much sleep over what is out of my control,” he said.
All this change trickled down to the junior game. Free or deeply discounted golf equipment found its way into the hands of junior golfers in a way never previously imagined, all while complying with the revised status of amateur golfers. Elite juniors suddenly signed with agents – also now permitted by the Rules of Golf – in pursuit of NIL money. Some have attracted pro-like entourages that often include trainers and instructors.
The change has not been limited to the men and the boys. The elite women’s amateur game has evolved as well, much of it coming from the same forces. Since its 2019 debut, the Augusta National Women’s Amateur has elevated the women’s game immensely.
With this enterprise package, Global Golf Post aims to explore these changes and detail how and why they came about. We do not pass judgment on it; that is left to you, the reader, after we have explained the changes in detail.
We talked to numerous informed individuals who are in or close to the amateur game: USGA officials, college coaches, agents, tournament sponsors, AJGA officials and representatives of equipment manufacturers, among others. They enabled us to create this important look at how the amateur game has changed so dramatically in the past five years.
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Top: Blades Brown
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