Keeping the praise of the promising younger players in perspective

What remains the most captivating topic on the PGA Tour is a long-running story – the well-seasoned icon named Tiger Woods.

Headed to the home stretch of his 45th birthday, Woods generates enthusiasm with fans, curiosity with colleagues and ratings for television producers.

But if you want to turn to other discussions that ignite interest with serious golf fans, a leading candidate involves a trio of youngsters who were either in nappies or not even born when Woods first turned the golf world upside down with his incomparable 12-stroke victory at the 1997 United States Masters.

Truly, we have received another generation of professional golfers when we’re talking about kids who got serious about golf when Woods was on the back nine of his brilliant career, but we can say that about a most brilliant trio – Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff.

By now, their meteoric rise on the PGA Tour has been well-documented, though you need to remind yourself of the excessive speed in which notable achievements, just to offer due respect.

Up until late spring in 2019, they were three of the best amateur golfers in the world, collegiate stars in the United States at the University of Oklahoma (Hovland and Wolff) and the University of California (Morikawa).

Before the northern hemisphere summer of 2019 would come to an end, they would become the latest hotshot collegians getting PGA Tour tee times at the back of the field as sponsor’s exemptions.

Said Hovland in March: “I think, honestly when (the three of us) were in college and looking forward to turning pro, that was definitely our plans, if you will, that we were obviously dreaming about (winning together).

“But for all of us to have won within a year, I mean, it's pretty remarkable. I don't know how else to explain it. It's a pretty crazy ride.”

But by autumn, they were charging up the world rankings, seizing headlines with consistent success, opening eyes, generating massive interest. Then everything changed in early August, when Morikawa affirmed all of those early accolades by winning the PGA Championship. It was just his second start in a major and his final-round 64 was the best by a winner in 25 years.

Said Morikawa at the time: “I've believed in myself since day one. I’ve said it when we’ve sat down (before). I specifically remember at (the) Travelers (tournament) the four of us, me and Wolff, Viktor and Justin Suh, and I just told everyone — we've all had some pretty good paths, Justin has struggled a little bit— but we all believed since day one that we can do this. I haven't let up from that.”

Looks at these statistics.

* After Morikawa, who was 22, played his first tour event as a pro, he was ranked No 1,039 in the world golf rankings. He won in his sixth start and one year later, with only 27 tournaments under his belt, Morikawa has three wins to his name and became No 5 in the world. (For the record, that means he has passed 1034 players in just 13 months.)

* Hovland, a personable young man from Norway, turned professional at 21 a week after Morikawa, made the cut, and was ranked 340th. It took him until his 12th start to post a victory and now, just 22 tournaments into his pro career, he is 30th in the world.

* Wolff was 20 when he made his debut alongside Hovland in June 2019 and when that tournament was over, he sat 1641st in the world. His third start was a victory and now, just 26 tournaments in, Wolff has a ranking of 36.

Morikawa said recently: “I think we had a lot of guys watching us knowing, yeah, we could be the ‘next guys,’ and who know if we were or we weren’t. So we had that entire summer to go make something. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my golf game and everything about how to be a professional out there, and it’s been a lot of fun and I love every part of it, so I’m excited to keep this going.”

But World Golf hall of fame member Curtis Strange would also like to hand out a set of reins so people could control the enthusiasm.

“Whoa, let’s not crown them so quickly. Let’s see how they handle the stage, what continues to work for them.” (It should be noted that Strange provided these thoughts before Morikawa claimed the first major championship of his career.)

Mind you, the two-time US Open champion is not dismissing any of these three youngsters. In fact, Strange praises Morikawa, Hovland and Wolff for the way in which they’ve exploded into view. He especially loves how “they each own their swing, and that’s key for any player to perform under pressure, which is why I think they will continue to have success.”

It’s just that Strange is not a big fan of this constant rush to anoint players, or groups of players, as “the best.”

For one, a PGA Tour career is a marathon, not a sprint, and every serious competitor is focused on being successful for 15 or 20 years, not just 10 months. And two, this fascination with constantly judging everything to be better today than yesterday is a byproduct of having very little feel for history.

For instance, Strange is like a lot of observers; he admires how quickly Morikawa, Hovland and Wolff have established a PGA Tour presence. But he cautions against calling them “the best” group of rookies arriving at the same time. For those with short-term capabilities, Strange asks, “Wasn’t it just a few years ago we were touting a group of kids as ‘the best?’”

He is referring to a lot of attention heaped upon the high school “Class of ’11,” kids named Justin Thomas, Patrick Rodgers and Daniel Berger. They all made PGA Tour debuts in 2014-15, with Berger, who played at Florida State, eventually earning rookie of the year honours over Thomas, a standout at the University of Alabama.

What adds even more flavour to this note is that Jordan Spieth and Emiliano Grillo – others from that 2011 class – copped rookie of the year honours, in 2013 and 2016, respectively.

As much as Strange gives high marks to the four combined wins for Morikawa, Hovland and Wolff, he again emphasises the “marathon, not a sprint” mantra and points out that Thomas already owns a major championship among his 13 wins and that he has had at least one win in each of his five seasons, that Berger has won three times, and that if you extend the “group” to include Spieth, you can add three majors and 11 wins.

Indeed, Thomas, Spieth and Berger – all born in 1993 – are used by Strange to support his notion that you need to let players mature and not get overly excited by what they do right away. There was reason to be impressed with them early, but even more so by how they’ve maintained excellence.

“A lot of talented kids win early, and then hit a comfort zone,” he said. “It’s like they’ve played beyond their abilities.”

Should you feel the need to affix “greatest ever” to the trio of Morikawa, Hovland and Wolff, don’t look for Strange to back you up. He knows that the greatest triumvirate of them all – Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson – all were born in 1912 and while their full entry onto that era’s PGA Tour came in different years (Nelson, 1935; Snead, 1937; Hogan, 1938) it remains a big part of folklore how they are intertwined.

But Strange is also of another era and can speak to the grueling process of what was known as the PGA Tour qualifying tournament – several stages needed to be hurdled to get into a six-round (some years it was eight) pressure-cooker where the top finishers (the number was different, it bounced between 20 and 40) got their tour cards for the next year.

Now earning your card through Q school isn’t as glitzy when compared to the manner in which Morikawa, Hovland and Wolff did (given a series of sponsor exemptions, they piled up wins or enough money to gain full status) but if you subscribe to the theory that a golf career is a marathon, not a splashy sprint, then may we suggest a peek at some notable groups from days gone by?

For instance, November of 1971 at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, when the 23 graduates included Tom Watson, Lanny Wadkins, John Mahaffey and Australian legend David Graham. Certainly their 1972 rookie seasons were successful (Wadkins and Graham won, they combined for 18 top 10s, Wadkins was 10th on the money list, Mahaffey 37th, Graham 38th, Watson 74th), but it’s the marathon results that matter most.

Each man went on to win at least one major (Watson won five claret jugs and might be the greatest Open Champion of them all) and a combined 78 PGA Tour events. Watson, Wadkins and Graham are all enshrined in the World Golf hall of fame.

The 1972 and 1973 Q schools produced a trio of great young talents – Tom Kite, Andy North and Ben Crenshaw. Among their 19 wins each, Kite captured a US Open and Crenshaw two Masters, while North twice won the US Open in a career that never got a fair chance at stardom because of injuries.

So, let the applause ring out. But, let’s not play the “best ever” game if you talk about a group of young members. It remains to be seen where the Morikawa-Hovland-Wolff entry will rank in PGA Tour history because we need to let their careers play out.

They have a long road ahead of them to match the Watson-Wadkins-Mahaffey-Graham entry from 1971 Q school. And the Q school from the fall of 1975 was pretty good, too, with seven graduates – Andy Bean, Jerry Pate, Gary Koch, Bob Gilder, George Burns, Jim Thorpe, Don Pooley – having combined for 40 career wins.

Especially noteworthy about that group is that as rookies, Pate won twice, including the US Open, while Koch and Gilder also won. Proof positive that young kids have arrived at the same time and done impressive stuff for years on the PGA Tour.

Morikawa, Hovland and Wolff are just the latest. But we need to let them play on for years to come before we offer a complete assessment.

Collin Morikawa celebrates with caddie Jonathan Jakovac after making his final putt on the 18th green to win the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, California, last month. Photo credit: Harry How/Getty Images.