Winning Young Doesn’t Always Equate to Long-Term PGA Tour Success

The list of youngest winners on the PGA Tour this century features an amalgam of superstars, former stars, stars who never shined and perhaps some stars-in-waiting. Their commonality is that they triumphed at an early age. From there, these players took some divergent paths.

There’s Rory McIlroy, a bonafide, all-time, elite-level performer, who’s followed that nascent victory at Quail Hollow with wins — eventually — at each of the four majors. There’s Jordan Spieth, who appeared headed for similar reverence, perhaps even before McIlroy, but has struggled to regain his early-career excellence in recent years.

There’s Sergio Garcia, who won a Masters title. And Si Woo Kim, who won The Players.

Joaquin Niemann still has all the makings of someday reaching such a level. Tom Kim, whose name is posted three times on this top-10 list, recently claimed his fourth victory three years later.

We’re collectively optimistic about Aldrich Potgieter, less so about Nick Dunlap and downright flummoxed over Matthew Wolff.

The point is, they all started in the same spot — each winning for the first time between the ages of 19 years, 11 months and 21 years, 4 months. And they were each branded with the Next Big Thing label when it happened.

All of which leads us to Jackson Koivun, the latest player to join this list and receive this label.

Following a 3M Open during which he posted a third-round back-nine 28 to claim a three-shot lead, then went bogey-free in the final round for a three-shot win, it’s damned near impossible to find anyone, anywhere who won’t place the same expectations on Koivun as each of those other early winners.

The problem with winning so early – in Koivun’s case, it was three starts into his professional career – is that external anticipation becomes so outsized that it becomes difficult, if not entirely impossible, to fulfill.

It’s like a Monday morning quarterbacking trope at this point: If this weekend’s winner plays like that every time, he’s going to win a lot more tournaments! Well, yeah. We all understand, though, that even the greatest players in the game’s history were limited as to how often they’d reach their ceilings.

The expectations are borne from the small sample size, of course. Koivun has now won one of his three career starts as a pro – and if we want to enlarge that sample size and include his amateur performance at this level, he owns four top-fives and six top-11s in his last eight starts on the PGA Tour.

That’s a lot of really good golf in a very short period of time, which might lead even the most conservative observer to extrapolate over the long haul. But just like the major-league call-up who begins his career 4-for-10 from the plate, we shouldn’t expect Koivun to turn into golf’s equivalent of a .400 hitter for the simple reason that those are unrealistic expectations.

“I know the PGA Tour is hard and it’s very competitive, and fortunately enough I was able to get quite a few sponsor exemptions last summer to kind of get acquainted with the feeling of playing on the PGA Tour,” Koivun said after his closing 5-under 66 at the 3M Open. “These last three events have been definitely a little bit of a wake-up call getting back into the swing of things on the PGA Tour, but I’m just excited with the way I played this week.”

He should be. Like all those young winners before him, Koivun is starting out on the proper path for long-term success.

Only time will tell whether he’s the next McIlroy, or Spieth, or Dunlap, or Wolff.

Each one of these players who won on the highest level at a young age was saddled with expectations of becoming a superstar. Some fulfilled it, some didn’t. We’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d argue against Koivun reaching this peak on the heels of his first career victory, but remember, we would’ve said the same thing about everyone else on this list, as well.