t was Pablo Picasso who said “youth has no age,” an interesting existential concept that doesn’t necessarily apply to the PGA Tour, at the moment anyway, as another wave of brilliant young players are making themselves comfortable restructuring the game’s hierarchy. Consider the winners of the last three full-field tour events. They are 21-year-old Jackson Koivun, 24-year-old Michael Thorbjornsen and 24-year-old Michael Brennan. Admittedly, the depth of fields ratchets up this week as the FedEx Cup playoffs begin at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, reintroducing Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, among others, after their late-summer sabbaticals. But as the list of graduates from PGA Tour University demonstrates, the path to success on the tour, like many things, has been compressed for the best of the best. “The learning curve is much shorter,” said Trevor Immelman, the analyst on CBS Sports’ tour coverage. Koivun may be a rarity because he arrived on tour with greater expectations than Ludvig Åberg, Thorbjornsen, David Ford and Ben James, and the fact that he won the 3M Open in his third pro start validated the hype. As for Brennan, he won his first PGA Tour start last year at the Bank of Utah Championship after an eight-win career at Wake Forest and, for all of youth’s blessings, there are still lessons to be learned. “I got off to such a good quick and hot start that I thought it would be easier. I was like, oh, I’ve already won one, like this is going to be a piece of cake,” Brennan said Sunday night after winning the Wyndham Championship, salvaging a season that included only one top-10 finish before he won at Sedgefield Country Club. Brandt Snedeker, the 45-year-old captain of the U.S. Presidents Cup team, was rookie of the year in 2007 with oneRead More
