Almost everyone who plays college golf starts out wanting to play for a living. Here is how many actually chased it, how ready they felt, and the specific things college left them unprepared for.

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Nearly everyone who commits to college golf is, somewhere in their head, planning to turn pro. It is the quiet engine under the whole thing, the reason a kid spends a Tuesday in February hitting balls in the cold. So one of the things I most wanted to get out of this survey was honest data on the dream: how many really had it, how many acted on it, and whether four years of college golf actually prepared them for the jump.

The answers are some of the most clear-eyed in the whole survey, because these are people looking back at the dream from the other side of it.

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

The Numbers

Three questions, asked plainly.

Did you have aspirations of playing professional golf after college?

· Yes: 103 of 133 (77%)

· Maybe: 14 (11%)

· No: 16 (12%)

Did you pursue pro golf after college?

· Yes: 85 of 133 (64%)

· No: 48 (36%)

Do you feel like your college golf experience prepared you for professional golf?

· Yes: 79 (59%)

· Maybe: 28 (21%)

· No: 26 (20%)

So more than three quarters arrived with the dream, and roughly two thirds actually went and tried it. Of the 103 who said they had real pro aspirations, 82 pursued it, about 80%. The dream is close to universal, and most people do not just abandon it. They go find out.

The third number is the one worth sitting with. Only 59% felt college had prepared them for professional golf. One in five flatly said it had not. Among the 85 who actually pursued the pro game, the prepared number was higher (62 yes, 18 maybe, 5 no), which makes sense, the ones who felt ready were more likely to go. But across everyone, a fifth of these players walked out of four years of college golf and into the pro game feeling under-equipped for it.

The Reckoning

Before the prepared-or-not question, there is a harder one underneath, and several players answered it without being asked. For a lot of them, college was where the dream met the level, and the level won.

“Once I got to college I saw pretty quickly how good guys were and I had no business playing professional golf.”