Last week’s Cognizant event on the PGA Tour was remarkable on a few fronts. There was a new sponsor after years of Honda in the title role. There was the incredible scoring—a total of five-under-par 137 was needed to get to the weekend rounds. In years past, scores around par were sufficient enough to advance to weekend play.
In the opening round, Jake Knapp flirted with a record-tying PGA Tour 18-hole score of 58—eventually finishing with final hole birdie and thereby becoming just the 15th player to successfully break 60.
But the magic was hardly confined to Knapp.
Joe Highsmith barely made the 36-hole cut with a five-foot birdie putt as Friday’s round concluded. Then, the 24-year-old went on a scoring blitz, earning his first PGA Tour win by scoring the day’s lowest on both Saturday and Sunday with twin 64 rounds. Highsmith’s highlights came from a hot putter that holed an amazing 230 feet of putts in the final 36 holes.
The former Pepperdine star executed the extraordinary in coming back from an eight-shot 36-hole deficit and becoming just the 9th player in the last 50 years—and the first since 2009—to earn the win after just making the cut.
The final 18 holes featured a blemish-free round with seven birdies scored, including a final one from 30-feet at the penultimate hole. Amazingly, a man who started 123rd in world rankings prior to the event is now 59th.
In the 53-year-history of the event, no player has scored 128 over the final two rounds of play. But Highsmith’s accomplishments were not simply a solo achievement.
An even younger talent was making his presence known at PGA National. Luke Clanton, a Florida State collegiate sensation and the world’s top-ranked amateur, seized his opportunity to nail down the most prized of possessions—a PGA Tour card.
The brain trust in Ponte Vedra wisely instituted a progressive promotion program called PGA Tour University in November 2022. The program bridges the gap between college golf and professional golf. College golf’s top players can earn membership through PGA Tour University and have a guaranteed place to play immediately after their college careers are complete.
In years past, star collegians needed to go through a laborious qualifying process before securing a Tour card. For those with no status, that could mean a three-stage process. For others—it could mean going abroad and attempting that route as five-time major champion Brooks Koepka did when he left for Europe after concluding his amateur days as a star collegian, also from Florida State.
The 21-year-old Clanton has notched five top-15 finishes in just 11 PGA Tour starts, including runner-up finishes at the 2024 John Deere Classic and The RSM Classic. Clanton earned 14 PGA Tour University Accelerated points via his Tour achievements, with the other six points coming via his position in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. He collected 17 of the 20 points from June to November of 2024, marking the fastest accumulation of points in the program to date.
When Clanton turns professional, likely by spring, he can use that momentum as a likely springboard for future tournament successes.
Others have done similarly—most notably Ludvig Aberg. The 25-year-old Swedish sensation played collegiately at Texas Tech and then jump-started his professional career as the first PGA Tour University graduate.
Aberg would win the 2023 RSM Classic with matching final two rounds of 61. Ludvig would then be selected as a captain’s pick for that year’s victorious European Ryder Cup team and then, in 2024, played in his first major championship at the Masters, where he finished in the runner-up position to winner Scottie Scheffler.
Michael Thorbjornsen of Stanford was the next player to be No. 1 in PGA Tour University and is starting his first full year. Gordon Sargent, a former world-ranked number one amateur, is still playing collegiately at Vanderbilt and has his card locked up through the “accelerated” program for underclassmen.
A common theme is happening in professional golf. Younger and younger players are demonstrating the capacity to be totally competitive and thereby reshaping the manner by which men’s professional golf operates.
In 2024, Nick Dunlap became the first amateur in 33 years to win on the PGA Tour with victory at The American-Express event. Not since Phil Mickelson won the Tucson Open in 1991 did an amateur match that accomplishment. Dunlap was 20 years and 29 days old when he claimed his first PGA Tour title. The victory marked the second youngest such triumph in the past 90 years—only surpassed when Jordan Spieth won at 19 years and 352 days old.
The Alabama collegiate star was aided by a third-round 12-under-par score of 60, tying Patrick Cantlay’s record for the lowest round by an amateur on the PGA Tour. Interesting sidenote, Cantlay was 19 years old when setting that amateur scoring record as a star player at UCLA.
Several months later, Dunlap would win again in capturing the Barracuda Championship—this time as a professional. He became the first player to win two tournaments in a calendar year as both an amateur and professional respectively.
Years ago, before the ascendancy of Tiger Woods, the acclimation process in playing on the PGA Tour level was a gradual learning process. Players had to make adjustments, mentally and physically, in playing with more talented players and getting prepared for the various host venues before hitting one’s stride.
Those extended learning curves are now a thing of the past.
Competitions for both young boys and girls are a common occurrence through American Junior Golf Association events and others of equal stature. Players are, in many ways, looking to follow the pathway Tiger Woods followed in holding a golf club not long after they learn to walk.
Scoring records are happening with frequent regularity. How so?
Quality instruction is now more pervasive than ever before. Players are learning core fundamentals in laying the foundation for high-performing golf swing efficiencies. Fewer and fewer are the occurrences when one sees such idiosyncratic swings made famous by the likes of Jim Furyk and others.
Physical conditioning is also being shaped so that human bodies are better prepared to handle the stress of hitting golf balls rigorously in daily sessions. Players are now more conscious in securing proper diets. Go out on any practice tee for a professional event and you won’t be finding any golfer who looks like they’ve been eating a steady number of triple burgers from Wendy’s.
In years past—players who lived in cold climate areas would need to take time off because of inclement weather. Now, enhanced simulators are prevalent, with detailed statistical analysis showing all relevant golf swing information.
The amazing depth of skilled players has elevated the standard of play, reaching down to regional and state levels.
Such incredible player development has also been aided by a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of college athletes’ right to profit from their name image and likeness (NIL). That decision was in the case of National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston.
Players are now able to use financial resources that they were not permitted to years ago under the amateur status requirements.
Adding to the mix in enhancing competition is the PGA Tour’s limiting total exemptions to a max of 100 players from 125 starting in 2026. The intensity of competition is bringing into focus the skill set of younger and younger players eager to make their presence on the PGA Tour.
One can see that depth at any Korn Ferry Tour event. The so-called “minor” league of professional golf is stacked with players eager to ascend to the highest competitive levels in the sport. The rallying cry is a simple belief—why not me?
Years ago, when two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange was interviewing Tiger Woods who had just turned pro in 1996, Strange was taken aback by the presumed hubris Woods stated when saying he was ready to win immediately. Strange internally scoffed at such a lofty assessment with the words, “You'll learn.”
Woods did as a fast learner—winning his first PGA Tour event that Fall, and by April 1997, securing the first of five green jackets at Augusta as the youngest winner of the Masters.
Looking back, it was Curtis who needed to realize his words were “strange” to the ears of a young Tiger who saw the approaching mountaintop and was ready to plant his flag at the top of it.
Barriers are in the minds of those compelled to be held back. Modern professional golf is now the domain of younger and better-prepared talent. The successes of such past titans as Woods and Mickelson are now the goal for the next generation of players.
Professional golf is now reshaping itself. NBC-Sports golf analyst Kevin Kisner correctly stated during the telecast that confidence is the magic word that pushes players beyond the limitations set by others. That unshakeable belief can carry players to heights they envision but that others do not.
How apropos for this seismic movement within the sport to crystalize around an event called Cognizant. The writing is indelibly posted on the wall for all to see and acknowledge.
Yes, indeed.
