What Does it Take to be a Professional Golfer?
So, You Want to Start Your Professional Golf Career
You’ve been playing golf for a while now, and you want to know what it will take to make a living of it. You’ve got a strong game and you easily beat your friends on the links, but what else do you need to take that next step to start a professional golf career?
Practice, Practice, Practice
As far as your game is concerned, it needs to be consistently good. Playing once a week and hitting the driving range occasionally won’t cut it – you need to be devoted to your craft. The people who have professional golf careers are diligent at working on and becoming good at all phases of the game: Off the tee, fairway woods, long and short irons, the short game, and putting. The pros spend countless hours hitting buckets of balls every day. You need to expect to treat becoming a professional golfer as you would sitting behind a desk at a regular job, complete with the requisite long hours. Work at your game until you are consistent and can consider yourself a scratch golfer.
The Mind is a Steel Trap
While practicing your game is essential to start your professional golf career, you still need to work on other factors. You might be the world’s most physically talented golfer, but what about your mindset? Do you fall to pieces if you put your tee shot in the water on the first par three of your round? Have you snapped your 3-wood over your knee after you sliced your shot into the trees? You must have a calm, strong mind to start a golf career. Being able to focus on the foundation of your game while blocking out other players, the audience, and the double-bogey you notched on the last hole, is extremely difficult.
Some professional golfers even employ psychologists to help them strengthen this part of their game.
Summer Tours
Once you achieve “scratch” status, consider playing in as many tournaments as you can in your area. This is great practice, because you’ll want to practice playing against comparable competition as much as possible. This is quite different than thrashing your buddies on your home course every weekend. Start to look for opportunities for entry in professional developmental mini tours, where the competition increases, as does the purse. With these tours, you can register as a “professional golfer,” and receive winnings if you play well enough. From here, you need to be finishing near the top of the leader board. Remember, you must do whatever it takes to continue playing well. Concentrate on developing every element of your game, and you could one day be walking down the fairways of Augusta.
Want to improve your game while learning the ins and outs of the golf industry?
Getting a golf degree from the College of Golf at Keiser University will prepare you to go far in the golfing world. Contact us today with any questions you have about our programs.
I like the information above it’s pretty good and creates hope to people like me who have dreams of playing on the biggest tours in the world
It was interesting when you mentioned that it is important to be devoted to your craft when you are wanting to become a golfer. I would imagine that the key to becoming a really good golfer is nailing the basic fundamentals. Working with a professional coach of some kind would be a good way to learn golfing fundamentals.