Letters to Their 17-Year-Old Selves

Chapter 10 of The College Golf Report. What 128 former college golfers said when I asked them what they would tell themselves at seventeen.

“Looking back now, what would your golf advice be to your 17-year-old (junior golf) self?”

128 former college golfers answered. The responses are raw, often contradictory, occasionally beautiful. Some said work harder. Others said relax more. Some said get longer. Others said stop chasing distance. Some said trust your coach. Others said be careful who you trust.

This is a window into what college golfers wish they had understood before college.

If you’re new here, this is week 10 of a free, weekly walkthrough of a survey of 133 former college golfers.

The Five Themes

Reading through 128 open answers, the same five ideas turn up over and over. Different words, same message.

1. Play more golf.

This one showed up more than anything else.

“PLAY MORE GOLF, be more creative, and be honest with yourself: what needs improvement and have you been true to your own expectations?”

“Go play more, be less of a range rat.”

“Spend more time playing golf than swinging the golf club.”

“Play a ton of golf and tournaments. Own your process and have fun.”

One player got specific: “Being at the golf course for 8 hours is not good if you are not diligently working. You can achieve everything you need in under 4.5 hours.”

Another tied it to what changes in college: “Work on your short game more than any other aspect of the game and don’t spend as much time on the range as you think. Your body will change in college which will make your swing change, but the short game helps provide the consistency needed to find success.”

2. Short game. Short game. Short game.

If there’s one technical regret that dominated, it’s this one.

“Chip and putt like crazy.”

“Play more around the green. And I mean play, as in having fun and mess around to improve my short game.”

“Putt more, play and range less.”

“Learn to chip before anything else.”

“Take pride in short game efficiency.”

One player named the cost of skipping it: “Putt more. I was a great ball striker and my putting was exposed as a strong weakness because of this.”

3. The mental game matters more than you think

“You have to be your own friend (self talk) because golf is already hard enough.”

“Figuring out how to handle your mental health will be the most important thing. Staying focused on the next shot, not getting ahead of yourself or dwelling on the past.”

“Technique is only as important as your mind allows it to be.”

“Forgive yourself fast for poor shots.”

“Stop putting so much pressure on yourself to be ready by freshman fall. You are trying to get better for your final years in college, not your first tournament.”

“Be nicer to yourself.”

“You are good enough.”

One player captured the operational version: “Get a mental coach you can trust and work with regularly.”

4. Be selective about who you listen to

“Be very selective of the people you surround yourself with, and who you listen to.”

“Do not blindly trust coaches with big swing changes, and make sure you fully understand the mechanics you are trying to do before putting in the hours doing it.”

“Have a thick filter and be careful who you let into your inner advice circle in terms of your game. Look for the intersection of pedigree and someone who understands you uniquely.”

“Stop looking for magic beans every time and just trust in getting better every day, even if it’s 0.0001%.”

“Don’t ever forget what got you here, because what got you here can take you even further.”

5. Enjoy it

This showed up constantly, often from players who regretted taking it too seriously.

“Have fun. We have been fortunate to get the opportunity to grow up playing competitive golf at a high level.”

“Keep enjoying the game and working hard.”

“Play freely and have fun with it.”

“Don’t take everything too seriously. Focus on the process rather than the outcome.”

One Norwegian player wrote an entire paragraph that’s worth keeping intact:

“The amount of great golfers out there is unbelievable. I have the feeling that players from other countries are willing to sacrifice more just because they aren’t as privileged as Norwegians. I would try to enjoy the positives and always write or memorize the 1-3 great shots a round instead of remembering that one bad shot. There’s going to be tough times where you don’t see the end goal, but if you can try to always go back to the reason on why you play the game and cherish the good times, I believe it’s going to be more enjoyable.”

The Contradictions

Here’s what makes this data interesting: the advice contradicts itself. Five years of college golf experience produced opposite takeaways depending on which player you asked.

On distance. “Get longer.” “Gain more speed.” “Always have a desire to hit it farther.” Sitting right next to: “Don’t chase driver speed.” “No one cares how far you hit it. Controlling the ball beats distance.”

On technique. “Get a good swing coach and understand that aspect of the game better.” Next to: “Don’t obsess over technique.” “Stop looking for magic beans every time.”

On work ethic. “Work harder. The harder you work, the more fun you will have.” And: “Practice less and workout less, pace out my energy more.”

On pressure. “Be in as many pressure situations as possible.” And: “Don’t put too much pressure on yourself.”

What does this tell us? There isn’t a universal path. The advice that helped one player would have hurt another. Your 17-year-old self needs different advice than someone else’s 17-year-old self. The instinct to find the one right answer from a pile of conflicting answers is the instinct to flatten the truth.

What Almost Nobody Said

Almost nobody said “focus on your ranking.” One player explicitly flipped it: “Junior golfers get caught up in rankings and neglect to play in certain lower-tiered tournaments.”

Almost nobody said “specialize earlier.” Multiple players mentioned the opposite: “Play another sport. Learn how to compete when you aren’t the best.” That one hits close to home in Norway, where late specialization is the default.

A Coach’s Perspective

What struck me reading through 128 letters to 17-year-old selves is how small the regrets are. Almost no one in this survey wished for a different direction. The regrets are calibration regrets: play more on the course, putt more, be nicer to yourself, trust fewer people with the deep work.

That’s a useful thing for a junior golfer to know. The fear at 17 is that you’re about to make a permanent mistake. The data from 128 people who actually made the decision is that the mistakes are mostly inside the decision, not the decision itself.

Junior golfers - especially the talented ones - tend to arrive in college believing they need to become a different player. Bigger, faster, more analytical, more disciplined, more whatever the new program asks of them.

The things that made you good enough to be recruited are the same things that will keep you scoring. You don’t need to replace them. You need to protect them while you add to them.

The other thing I’d say, watching juniors today, is that the volume of advice they’re processing is genuinely higher than it was for me at Baylor in 2011. Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, AI - short-form content. There are 30 versions of every opinion. The filter is the skill. The players in this survey who handled college golf well had a small list of people they actually listened to, and a much larger list of people they politely ignored.

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Next chapter: What 128 College Golfers Learned From Their Teammates - the part of college most players said shaped them more than the golf did.

If this one was useful, share it with the junior golfer or parent who needs it.

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