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There are a few things happening in the world of sports right now that have my mind on teenagers. (FBI, if you’re reading this, please continue … I swear it’s fine.) The first is Cooper Flagg, the recent Duke star and current Dallas Maverick who is still, somehow, 18 years old. He skipped his final year of high school to play at Duke, and while there, at 17, he was very clearly the best college player in the country and also a generational talent. A year later, barely eligible to vote, he’s averaging almost 18 points per game for the Mavs and getting better all the time. He’s probably going to win Rookie of the Year, and my main thought about Flagg is that he has never required a transition period at any level of basketball … or if he has, it’s been insanely short. He’s 18, he’s already proved he’s an elite NBA talent, and the only real drama left in terms of his trajectory is whether he’ll become the best player in the sport at some point in his career.
I assume most people reading this have heard of Cooper Flagg, but fewer will know Luke Littler. Littler is also 18 years old (though he looks like he’s about 38), and he’s spent the last year lighting the darts world on fire. Last year around this time, he became the youngest world champion in darts history, and he followed that up by winning almost every major event in the world. The wins and the stats paint the picture of an all-time superstar, and again, he’s 18 *$*%ing years old.
Teenagers are thriving in other sports, too. In tennis, Carlos Alcaraz won his first Grand Slam at 19, which takes after his countryman Rafael Nadal, who won his first French Open at 19. Max Verstappen was only 18 when he captured his first F1 Grand Prix, Lamine Yamal is an absolute terror for Barca at 18. Teen Slam winners are common in women’s tennis (Coco Gauff, Iga Swiatek, and Emma Raducanu recently), and in the last decade and change, you’ve had a slew of teenage major winners in women’s golf, from Lydia Ko to Brooke Henderson to Morgan Pressel to Lexi Thompson. Jeeno Thitikul, the No. 1 golfer in the world, is 22, but she first rose to the top spot as a 19-year-old.
Historically speaking, it’s a good time to be a teen in the world of professional athletics. It was never a bad time, but now fans can realistically expect to see teenagers at the absolute highest levels.
But what about men’s golf? To find a major champion who won as a teenager, you have to go back more than 100 years, to 1911, when Johnny McDermott won the U.S. Open. He’s one of two examples ever, the other being Young Tom Morris, who captured his first Open at age 17 in 1868. I love Young Tom—he’s one of the most fascinating figures in sports history (the podcast I did on him was my favorite ever to research)—but it should go without saying that his victory, and McDermott’s, aren’t in the same neighborhood as the modern achievements. Morris was only competing against 11 other players, and though McDermott faced a larger field, he wasn’t playing the best British players of the time.
The point is, there’s something about men’s golf specifically that demands a little more seasoning in order to reach the game’s peak. When you look at the best players of the last century, you’ll find the men who came closest, but were still a year or two behind the curve—Tiger Woods was 21 at the ’97 Masters, Jack Nicklaus was 22 at the ’62 U.S. Open, Rory McIlroy was 22 at 2011 U.S. Open, Seve Ballestros was 22 at the ’79 Open, and Jordan Spieth, though he’s fallen off that heady trajectory, captured two of his own at age 21 in 2015. Even when you lower the bar a little, and set the standard at a PGA Tour win, Spieth is the the youngest, at 19, two win in the last 95 years at the 2013 John Deere Classic (although Nick Dunlap was just 29 days late with his victory in the ’24 American Express.)
So why can’t the teens break through? Does golf require some special maturity or experience that other sports don’t? Not according to the women! But the concept of a teenager winning on the men’s side almost seems outlandish in 2025. If Tiger couldn’t do it, why would anyone else be able to pull it off? We haven’t even had a rookie Masters winner of any age since the late Fuzzy Zoeller in ’79, and if any of the game’s current top teenagers managed to win, it would be staggering.
Part of it is inherent to the culture of the sport. The path to actually playing in the majors is far less direct than in other sports, and on the men’s side, the Americans in particular tend to go to college for at least a few years before they turn pro, meaning that actual playing spots for teenagers are limited to the very few exemptions given to amateur tournament winners. You don’t see many American men taking the Lexi Thompson route and turning pro at age 15, whereas that’s far more common in a sport like tennis. Spieth was an exception—he left during his sophomore year of college, and that’s part of the reason why he’s the only teenage winner on tour since 1931. A better example is Scottie Scheffler, the second-best player we’ve seen this century. He stayed in college all four years, then had to go through Q School just to get on the Korn Ferry Tour, needed only a year there to make the PGA Tour, but was already 22 when he made his first major start. And by golf standards, he rose through the ranks fast!
Those structural barriers also mean that while there are plenty of teenagers out there who have a similar skillset to the top touring pros on paper, the reality is that they’re not facing the same kind of competition and gathering the same experience as those older players, and often they’re not playing in the same conditions. If you’re good enough at darts or tennis or driving a race car, you can advance relatively quickly to the upper echelons, and compete against the best 30-year-olds in a venue you’re familiar with. In golf, there are hurdles in place that can take years to overcome, so that even if you win the U.S. Amateur and get a berth in a few majors, there’s no way to be truly prepared for what awaits you there. It’s easy to look at the last 115 years, and all the limiting factors, and say that it probably ain’t happening.
Stephen A. Smith voice: HOWEVER!
Advances in technology and training give the young guys advantages that their predecessors never had, and I can’t stop thinking that even though it’s been a long drought, we’ve had a few players come really close. You can almost guarantee that in the next 50 years, there will be more close calls, and gun to head, I’d bet that we get a teenage winner in that time. But it’ll take someone special—even more special than we see in other sports—and if it ever happens, we’ll be looking at the birth of a legend.
Previously on Golfpocalypse:
Justin Thomas’ comments on the Bethpage greens only highlight Keegan Bradley’s failureThe Internet Invitational was a story about fathers: Good, bad, and toxicI’ve arrived at the brutal crossroads of the mediocre recreational golferNone of LIV Golf’s format ideas ever mattered, and they won’t start nowPlaying golf in bad weather is a mental paradiseWhy don’t we care when a journeyman or no-name wins on Tour?I hate that I am riveted by Bryson DeChambeau’s ping pong challengeLet me teach you where to stand on the tee box to not annoy peopleI turned down two free rounds at the best course in the world because I’m weird about golfI don’t want your gimme putt, palI will no longer be entering nine-hole rounds, GHIN, and you can’t make meI will abandon my friends during a round. Does this make me a bad person?Did I dishonor the game via handicap shenanigans?Rory’s Masters win was the ultimate “dudes crying” moment in golfI want to be a draw alpha, not a fade betaIf you had to give up golf or sex for the rest of your life, which would it be?I am the recent victim of golf snobbery, and I’m madShould the Tour just move to an F1 style schedule and be done with it?I was the world’s most annoying teenage golf maintenance workerCan golf still be a spiritual experience in 2024?There is nothing stranger than a golfer’s brain…just ask usI have the dumbest golf pet peeve, but I can’t shake itIf you talk about politics on the course, please, for God’s sake, stopLoving Golf in 2024 is about finding where the money isn’tI believed in the magic of Tiger Woods when I was a kid, but I’m a cynic nowIf you can enjoy playing golf alone, you have achieved NirvanaI took 12 stitches to the head for golf before I even loved itAn annual ‘Friends Ryder Cup’ trip is the greatest thing in golfMarshals at public golf courses need to get way meanerI, and I alone, have the genius tweak to fix the Tour ChampionshipIt cannot be fun to play golf when you’re egregiously badConfession: I break clubs when I’m madPlaying golf in bad weather makes me feel aliveCaring what other people think of your golf game is annoying to other peopleSympathize with Rory, because choking sucks
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
