I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, probably because I know it’s coming to an end.
I’m a senior now, which still feels weird to say out loud. It feels like I just got here, showing up as a freshman trying to figure everything out—new team, new coaches, trying to prove I belonged. And now somehow I’m one of the older guys, looking around and realizing how fast it all went.
Everyone talks about college golf as a stepping stone, like it’s just part of the path to whatever comes next. And yeah, that’s part of it. We all want to play professionally. We all think about it, whether we say it out loud or not.
But if I’m being honest, the thing I’m going to remember the most isn’t the tournaments. It’s the guys.
There’s something about competing with your best friends that makes this whole thing different. We practice together every day, travel together, eat together, sit around talking about nothing and everything. You go through the highs and lows as a group, and it makes the whole experience feel bigger than just your own game.
You can have a bad round, and it still feels okay because someone else on your team stepped up. Or you can play great, and it means more because you’re doing it for something other than yourself.
I didn’t really understand that when I got here.
I thought it was all about getting better, lowering my scoring average, building a resume for the next level. And that stuff matters. It still does. But somewhere along the way, the team part of it became the best part of it. I know I’m going to miss that.
I think about it more now because this is the last stretch. Last spring season. Last conference championship. Last shot at doing something big together.
To be named an All-American again would be great, but we all want to win a national championship. That’s the goal. It’s been the goal since the first day I got here. And I think we have a team that can do it, which makes this year even more fun. There’s a belief in the locker room that’s hard to explain unless you’ve felt it.
But at the same time, I’m trying not to let that goal take away from what this actually is. Because I know what’s coming next. Or at least I have an idea.
Golf only gets more serious after this.
There’s no team. No guaranteed schedule. No built-in group of guys you see every day. It becomes more individual, more business, more about results than anything else. And I want that. I’m excited for that challenge.
But I also know I’ll never get this version of golf again.
I’ll never get four years of playing alongside the same group of guys, chasing the same goal, living in the same place, with the same routines and inside jokes and team dinners and van rides and all of it.
You only get college once.
And I think that’s something I’m starting to understand more now than I did before.
There are still moments where I catch myself thinking too far ahead—what comes next, where I’ll play, whether I’m good enough to make it out there. I don’t have all those answers yet. Most of us don’t.
But I’ve been trying to get better at pulling myself back to where I am right now. Because right now is pretty good.
That’s not something I want to rush past.
I still care about playing well. I still want to win. I still want to do everything I can to help this team have the best season possible.
But I’m also trying to enjoy it more.
To actually take it in while it’s happening instead of just moving on to the next thing. Because I know one day I’ll look back and realize this was the good part. Not because of the results, but because of who I got to share it with.
We’re all chasing something right now. A title, a future, a place in the game.
But at the same time, we’re just a group of 22-year-olds playing golf with our best friends.
And that’s something I don’t want to take for granted.
— A College Golfer