[PHOTO: Getty Images]
Australian Karl Vilips doesn’t know how many times he’s played the Players Stadium course at TPC Sawgrass, but it’s a lot. The former child prodigy competed in the AJGA’s Junior Players Championship six times, and since turning pro last year, he has based himself in the Jacksonville area and calls Sawgrass his home club.
But this week, the 23-year-old is playing the iconic Pete Dye course for the first time as a PGA Tour winner after claiming victory last Sunday at the Puerto Rico Open. “It was such a thrill to hit quality shots down the stretch,” Vilips said on Wednesday in Florida, looking back on his eight-under 64 on Sunday at Grand Reserve Golf Club, which allowed him to close out a one-shot win in just his fourth career tour start, and third as a tour member.
Mind you, a start in the Players this quickly into his pro career isn’t all that surprising. At least not to those who followed along as his father, Paul, documented Karl’s junior golf accomplishments on a YouTube channel called “Koala Karl” while growing up in Australia. The channel covered practically Karl’s entire journey to the PGA Tour. One of his most popular videos, which got almost 250,000 views, shows Phillips at a young age presenting to the camera while playing Pebble Beach.
The irony is, on the eve of Vilips’ Players debut, the Creator Classic series was being held on Wednesday afternoon at TPC Sawgrass with influencers such as YouTube golfer Grant Horvat playing the Stadium course. Vilips, though, was a YouTube guy well before YouTube golf became trendy.
“It’s funny seeing comments [on social media] that I’m like the original YouTube golfer,” Vilips said, laughing. “Seeing where YouTube golf is at the moment, it’s pretty crazy.”
Born in Indonesia on the same day as the first round of the 2001 PGA Championship, Vilips moved with his family at a young age to Western Australia. It was there that he first took up the game, playing junior golf against, among others, Min Woo Lee, the 2016 US Junior champion three years Vilips’ senior.
Vilips says his first exposure to elite tour pros was meetings with Tiger Woods and Adam Scott. At the 2010 Australian Masters, Vilips’ father brokered a meet-and-greet with Woods, who returned to Melbourne to defend his 2009 victory at Kingston Heath. “It was at the back of the range and I was 8 years old,” Vilips said. “Honestly, I just remember not saying a word, really. I kind of looked at him and [remember] being super intimidated. It was really cool.”
A year later, Vilips met Scott when Australian Golf Digest set up a photoshoot for the opening of a new course at Sanctuary Cove. Vilips and Scott, who was two years away from winning the Masters, played three holes together.
Shortly after, Vilips and his dad moved to the US to continue his development against elite American juniors. He was based in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, for ‘middle’ school and then Tampa, Florida, for high school. As a five-time Junior All-American, Vilips committed to college golf at Woods’ alma matter, Stanford.
Choosing to play for the Cardinal was an easy decision after he and close friend Michael Thorbjornsen (also now playing the PGA Tour) met Woods again at the Presidents Cup at Liberty National in 2017, where Woods was working as an assistant captain.
“We had a good 10-minute conversation [about Stanford] as we walked down the 15th hole and he was in his cart,” Vilips, who played the Junior Presidents Cup that week, recalled. “Hopefully when I meet him again, I’ll be able to say something to him.”
The transition to college golf, however, proved a challenge for Vilips, who struggled as a freshman. That’s when a mutual friend in the Australian golf system put Vilips in touch with instructor Colin Swatton. At the time, Swatton had stopped coaching or caddieing for former world No.1 Jason Day and agreed to take on Vilips.
“I told Karl early on that there were a lot of similarities between he and Jason,” said Swatton, who now is back again with Day as well as Vilips, and is also doing commentating for the PGA Tour’s world feed broadcasts. “They both process information in a similar way; Karl is a deep thinker.”
Working together, they made some tweaks to Vilips swing, but Swatton recalls being more interested in helping Vilips unleash the talent that was already there. “He has a lot of speed and is a fantastic iron player,” Swatton says. “But I told him his game was more suited to professional golf than college golf. He saw his buddies shooting 64 regularly and thought he had to make birdies all the time. We brought him round to playing smarter golf, because pro golf is about bogey avoidance when you have the talent Karl has. As it were, the last 18 months of his college career was really good.”
That’s one way to put it. Vilips qualified for the 2023 US Open at Los Angeles Country Club, where Swatton caddied for him. Vilips also won the 2024 Pac-12 Championship and had five top-10 results in his senior season.
By finishing 10th in the 2024 PGA Tour University ranking, Vilips earned starts on the Korn Ferry Tour when college golf was done in May and he turned pro. He proceeded to win the Utah Championship in his sixth KFT start, setting up a dream of being able to play his way on to the PGA Tour via the KFT points list. At the end of 2024, he was named the Korn Ferry Tour rookie of the year.
Getting starts as a PGA Tour rookie has been tricky in 2025, but when the Puerto Rico Open being played the same week as the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Vilips got into the event. He then managed to hold off Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen of Denmark, who birdied six straight holes to start the back nine and closed with a 63, to claim PGA Tour win No.1.
After his victory, Vilips, who recently signed as the first tour pro to represent Woods’ new apparel company, Sun Day Red, fielded a call from the founder, whose number he didn’t even have. The 15-time major winner left a voicemail congratulating Vilips. Meanwhile, Villips’ former junior pal, Lee, who is still chasing his own maiden PGA Tour victory after three wins on the DP World Tour, said he was in awe of Vilips’ meteoric rise.
“You don’t often just come out on the PGA Tour and win that quickly,” Lee said Wednesday at TPC Sawgrass. “Hopefully it builds his confidence because his talent level is so high.”
One of the bonuses for earning a maiden PGA Tour win was snaring the last spot at the Players. Vilips lives a 20-minute drive from TPC, “although this week that’s probably an hour,” he joked about traffic.
“It’s an unreal course. you just have to hit so many different golf and get creative off the tee,” Vilips said. “I love the place. I think it suits my game. I’m excited for the tournament.”
Adds Swatton: “I’m not surprised that he’s here [as a recent winner playing at TPC Sawgrass], but I am surprised at how quickly he got here. He was playing college golf less than a year ago.”
