There’s an elite, exclusive club in the world of college golf where new members are rarely added.
There’s an elite, exclusive club in the world of college golf where new members are rarely added.
The cost to get in? A once-in-a-lifetime round. While no player has ever crossed the scoring threshold into the 50s, 19 men’s players have signed for a 60. And in 2023, the first woman joined the club.
Only one woman has ever signed for a 60 in an official college round: N.C. State’s Lauren Olivares Leon in the 2023 Cougar Classic. Seven have signed for a 61, most recently in 2024 courtesy of Mississippi State’s Avery Weed in the opening round of The Ally. Michigan’s Monet Chun fired a 61 in April 2024 at the Chattanooga Classic. Denver’s Anna Zanusso also did so at the Westbrook Invitational. Julia Johnson of Ole Miss did the same in 2019 at the Battle at the Beach. While at Gonzaga, Bianca Pagdanganan shot a 61 at the 2017 Pizza Hut Thunderbird Invitational. Before that, Colorado’s Esther Lee joined the club at the Branch Law Firm/Dick McGuire Invitational in 2016. Stanford’s Mariah Stackhouse recorded the first women’s 61 at the 2013 Peg Barnard Invitational.
Take a scroll through the members of college golf’s Club 60.
This list is updated through the 2024 Procore Championship.
There’s a lot of money to be made in professional golf.
Tiger Woods maintains his overall lead atop the PGA Tour’s all-time money list. He is the first golfer to surpass the $120,000,000 mark in on-course career earnings and the only one over the $100 million mark.
Phil Mickelson, before departing for the LIV Golf League, surpassed the $90 million mark. Rory McIlroy is third on this list. He has gone past $90 million as well. Scottie Scheffler is now the seventh to break the $70 million mark. Jason Day was the 11th to surpass the $60 million mark. Every golfer on this top 18 list is now a member of the $50 million club.
With the bigger pots at stake in the PGA Tour’s signature events, expect a lot of movement up in the next few years on this list. There are now 83 golfers who have surpassed the $25 million mark in career on-course earnings.
With that in mind, let’s look at the top money earners of all-time, as measured by on-course winnings. Some of the names may surprise you.
Editor’s note: This list is updated through the 2024 Procore Championship.
This is the list of the longest drivers on the PGA Tour for each season since 1980, when the stat was first kept.
Who are the longest drivers on the PGA Tour?
They’ve been keeping stats on average driving distances since 1980.
In 2003, the mark of 321.4 yards was achieved by Hank Kuehne and was the standard-bearer for almost two decades. During the 2019-20 season, Bryson DeChambeau broke Kuehne’s 17-year-old mark. One year later, DeChambeau broke his own mark.
Go back to 1997, where John Daly was the first to surpass the average distance of 300 yards. In all, Daly led the Tour in driving distance 11 times.
Being a big hitter doesn’t always lead to victory. Only eight golfers on this list won a PGA Tour event in the same year they led in driving. In case you were wondering, neither Tiger Woods nor Phil Mickelson ever led the Tour in driving distance.
This is the list of the longest drivers starting in 1980 through the 2024 regular season at the Tour Championship.
This list is updated through the 2024 JM Eagle LA Championship at Wilshire Country Club
The LPGA has three members of the $20 million club, five who have won at least $17 million in on-course earnings, 24 with $10 million or more and 81 who have earned at least $5 million.
Annika Sorenstam leads the way. Sorenstam, Karrie Webb and Cristie Kerr are the three golfers who have surpassed $20 million.
Nellly Korda, with her win the 2024 Chevron Championship, her second major, surpassed $11 million. Jin Young Ko has become the 20th to reach the $12 million mark.
Let’s take a closer look here at the top 20 of all-time.
This list is updated through the 2024 JM Eagle LA Championship at Wilshire Country Club.
It’s one of the hardest things to achieve in the game.
The first one came in 1977.
It was another 14 years before someone did it again.
It was then eight years after that before it happened a third time.
Breaking 60 has always held mythical status in golf.
Al Geiberger (1977), Chip Beck (1991) and David Duval (1999) were the first three to pull it off.
Since 2010, there have been eight more PGA Tour golfers who shot a 59, including Jim Furyk, who also shot a record-setting 58 from in 2016. He remains the only golfer to shoot a 58 on Tour and he’s the only golfer to break 60 twice.
Bryson DeChambeau joined the 58 Club after his 12-under round in a LIV Golf event.
Scottie Scheffler is the latest to break 60 on the PGA Tour, shooting a 59 in the second round of the 2020 Northern Trust. It’s the 12th time that a Tour golfer broke 60.
On the LPGA, there has only been one 59. It came in 2001 and was accomplished by Annika Sorenstam.
Joaquinn Niemann’s 59 in the 2024 LIV opener made him the second on that circuit to do it.
And in 2024, a golfer on the Korn Ferry Tour became the first to shoot 57 in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event.
Here’s a closer look at the sub-60 rounds in pro golf.
Cabot opens new courses in Florida and Saint Lucia, with more on the way.
Cabot effectively was a niche golf operator for much of its existence since the Canadian company opened its first course in 2012 on the remote shores of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
The original layout, Cabot Links, was exceptional, and it was followed a few years later by the even more highly ranked Cliffs course. More golf was added in 2020 in the form of a new short course, The Nest. The destination was a home run for company co-founder and CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar, who wisely put the emphasis on best-in-class golf at the Cape Breton property that was aided by the interest and investment of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort founder Mike Keiser.
But like Bandon Dunes, Cabot Cape Breton is a long way from most anywhere, and the Canadian golf season that far north runs just six months. While the Cabot brand represented the peak of modern Canadian golf, a world-class destination not to be missed by any seasoned golf traveler, for most of its existence the company wasn’t quite a major world player.
That has changed.
Cabot has grown up, and much of the globe is now its playground. By purchasing existing properties when promising and building from scratch when necessary, Cowan-Dewar has expanded Cabot’s operations south into the United States and across the Atlantic Ocean to Scotland. He has developed a focus on high-end accommodations, frequently manifesting in the form of aspirational real estate. And without defining how far he hopes to take the Cabot brand, he doesn’t plan to slow down.
The split-fairway, par-5 14th at Cabot Citrus Farms’ Karoo Course (Courtesy of Cabot/Matt Majka)
The growth has come fast and furious in recent years, most notably with the concurrent introduction of two courses in two different countries.
The built-from-scratch Point Hardy Golf Club – on one of the world’s most jaw-dropping pieces of golf land – opened to its members in December at Cabot Saint Lucia in the southern Caribbean. It soon will be followed in late January by the public-access Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida opening its first course, named Karoo, for preview play on the site of the former World Woods Golf Club.
All that is on the heels of Cabot having purchased Castle Stuart in Scotland in June of 2022, rebranding it to Cabot Highlands and announcing plans to add a second course designed by Tom Doak slated to open fully in 2025. And don’t forget Cabot Revelstoke, a mountainous destination planned to come online in 2025 with a layout by Rod Whitman, who designed the original Cabot course at Cape Breton. Revelstoke is in Canada, but this development is on the opposite side of the continent in British Columbia. Both these properties also will feature residential opportunities.
All the sudden, Cabot has become a year-round operator with developments that span nine time zones. It is now a company on which the sun will never set during the long days of a Canadian summer.
“We’ve always got a lot of irons in the fire,” Cowan-Dewar said in December while he overlooked a tropical marina not far from Point Hardy, trying to relax for a few minutes during a casual interview the day before his private Saint Lucia property hosted its members’ first rounds. “Did I ever conceive it would play out just like this? Of course not. But we did have plans to grow.”
From left, Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw, Mike Keiser and Ben Cowan-Dewar at Cabot Saint Lucia (Courtesy of Cabot/Jacob Sjöman)
The golf always came first for Cowan-Dewar, whose early ambitions drew the attention of a like-minded Keiser. The American developer serves as a sounding board for the Canadian, and from the beginning his advice has been to build great golf holes, then establish a business model around them.
That starts with the course architects. For Saint Lucia it would be the acclaimed team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who also designed the Cliffs at Cabot Cape Breton, rated by Golfweek’s Best as the top modern course in Canada. At Cabot Citrus Farms just north of Tampa, Cowan-Dewar selected the up-and-coming Kyle Franz for the Karoo course and is employing Franz alongside Mike Nuzzo and advisor Ran Morrissett for the second full-size 18 named The Roost, still in development and ambitiously slated to open for preview play in the spring of 2024.
Then it’s just a matter of giving the architects enough latitude to create something special on beautiful pieces of land ideally suited for golf.
“We’re hiring some of the greatest people to ever practice their craft,” Cowan-Dewar said. “How many times in your life do you get to work with some of the greatest artists at a moment in time when they are the best? And we’re lucky to do that. So we want to give them the biggest canvas possible with no limitations. Trust in the architects, and we can figure out the rest around that.”
That trust has led to two very different golf courses in Point Hardy and the Karoo at Cabot Citrus Farms.
This list focuses on the residential golf courses themselves, not the communities as a whole or other amenities.
Welcome to Golfweek’s Best 2024 ranking of top residential golf courses in the United States.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final, cumulative rating. Then each course is ranked against other courses in the region.
This list focuses on the residential golf courses themselves, not the communities as a whole or other amenities. Each golf course included is listed with its average rating from 1 to 10, its location, architect(s) and the year it opened.
From Hawaii to Florida, we offer the Golfweek’s Best ranking of top resort courses in the U.S.
Welcome to Golfweek’s Best 2024 list of top resort golf courses in the United States.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final, cumulative rating. Then each course is ranked against other courses in the region.
This list focuses on the golf courses themselves, not the resorts as a whole or other amenities. Each golf course included is listed with its average rating from 1 to 10, its location, architect(s) and the year it opened.
Here’s a look at some of the best college golf practice facilities in the country.
There’s been an arms race of sorts brewing in college athletics, especially over the last two decades.
Across the nation, colleges and universities have been beefing up their golf practice facilities, producing some incredible practice areas for their student-athletes that you have to see to believe. From all the latest video technology to locker room entertainment, golf facilities are becoming the place to be on campus.
From historically great Power 5 programs to mid-majors and everyone in between, college golf practice facilities are better now than they’ve ever been.
So, your friends at Golfweek are showcasing a database of college golf facilities. Check out the list below.
If you’re reading this and you’d like your school to be included, contact Cameron Jourdan.
There will be 33 official events with a record total prize fund of $118 million. In 2023, there were three events with a purse of $3 million or more. In 2024, there will be 10.
The first two events — Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions (Jan. 18-21), LPGA Drive On Championship (Jan. 25-28) — will be in Florida before a three-week stretch overseas.
The new Boston event — FM Global Championship (Aug. 29-Sept. 1) — will be the final tournament before the Solheim Cup.
However, let’s get to what the people really care about — the majors.
Here’s everything you need to know for the five major championships next year.
