What College Coaches Told Me on the Sideline at the US Junior Amateur Championship
18 Holes with Dr. Mat
I just got back from the US Junior Amateur. I watched a lot of golf. But the most valuable thing I brought home did not happen inside the ropes. It happened on the sideline.
I spent the week standing next to college coaches. Men’s programs. Big schools and small ones. And I asked them the same question.
What are you looking for when recruiting for a player?
I expected to hear about scoring average, or numbers, rankings, and results. That is what most parents assume, and that is what most junior golfers believe.
We were wrong.
One coach put it to me in a way and I have not stopped thinking about since. He said, “If you are here playing today, we know you are good. What we are looking for now is how do you handle setbacks, mistakes, challenges, and how work yourself around the course. We look for Golf IQ,” he said.
Read that again.
They are evaluating something beyond whether your kid can play. The invitation and qualification into the tournament already answered that question.
What They Actually Told Me They Watch
Golf IQ. Does the player understand the golf course, or does he/she just hit shots at it?
Strategy. Where does he/she aim on a tucked pin with a one shot lead? Where does he/she aim with a one shot deficit?
Process. Is there a routine, and does it hold up when the round starts going sideways?
Attitude. What happens in the twelve seconds after a bad shot?
Grit. Does the player fight for a bogey when double is easier?
Placement. They watch where the ball ends up relative to the next shot.
Consistency of misses. This one surprised me most. Coaches told me they watch where a player misses. A repeatable miss shows a player who owns their swing. A scattered miss shows a player who is guessing.
Notice what is missing from that list.
Perfection is absent. Low scores are absent. Flawless execution is absent.
The exact things that fill junior golfers with shame are the things coaches care about least.
Why This Matters for Your Family
Your kid walks off the course after a 78 and believes the day was a waste. You know the look. Head down. Clubs slammed in the trunk. Silence in the car.
Meanwhile a coach who watched three holes of that round wrote down that your kid made a smart decision on 14 after a bad tee ball on 13.
Two people watched the same round. One saw failure. The other saw a recruitable trait.
The gap between those two viewpoints is where most junior golf careers get lost.
And this is for the parents… I hope this then changes the questions you ask on the ride home. Instead of asking what they shot, try asking how they handled the hole that got away from them. That question tells your kid what you value. It also happens to match what coaches value at the recruiting stage.
The Faith Layer
Scripture never promises a clean scorecard. It promises presence in the mess.
Romans 5 says suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. That is a development sequence. The struggle itself does the forming. Your junior golfer will hit bad shots this season. That is a guarantee. What remains open is whether those shots build something or break something.
The coaches on that sideline were looking for evidence of character under pressure. God has been in that business a lot longer than any recruiting coordinator or college golf coach.
What To Do This Week
Change one question. On the drive home from the next tournament, ask about one decision instead of one number.
Track the miss. Have your player note where each poor shot ended up for three rounds. Pattern or scatter? That answer shapes practice.
Name the recovery. After every round, identify one moment where your player responded well to something going wrong. Say it out loud.
Separate the score from the self. A number measures a day. A person is measured by something else.
One More Thing
Those sideline conversations confirmed what I have been building toward for the past two months.
The Pressure Playbook uses cognitive behavioral techniques to train the exact skills coaches told me they are recruiting for. Handling setbacks. Managing the twelve seconds after failure. Making clear decisions when the stakes rise.
The pilot cohort is closed. We are building the full system with that group right now. However, when it is complete, we are opening access to junior golfers worldwide.
If you want to be on the list when that door opens, reply to this email or write me a note letting me know you are interested in learning more.
Email: info@mpgagolf.com
Closing Thought
Your player needs to be coachable, strategic, and resilient in front of people who are watching for it. Perfection sits outside that requirement.
That is trainable. That is the whole point.
What is one setback your junior golfer handled well this season that you never mentioned out loud?
Tell them tonight.
Your Mental Coach,
Dr. Mat
mpgagolf.com
Author of ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf
P.S. My book ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf is launching soon. It covers the same ground from a different angle. The mental game and the spiritual game run on the same wiring.