Golf is a notoriously difficult sport to turn pro in, your chances are slim at best to become professional at 30 as most pro golfers would decades of experience by then. However is it too late to become a professional Golfer at 30? I want to give you the best answer possible, and leave no question unanswered.
Unless you’ve been playing Golf very young it is unlikely you will be a pro player at 30, as according to Pro Tour Golf College, you need to invest a minimum of 1728 hours per year to become a Professional Golfer. This is 6 hours of practice per day for 6 days per week for 48 weeks per year.
I don’t mean to dishearten you but the reality is unless you’ve been hitting 1728 hours of practice per year for a long time you won’t be able to complete with players who have.
I will explain why it’s so challenging to become a pro what are the odds of becoming a pro. golfer, read on to find out!
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Is It Possible To Become A Professional Golfer At 30?
The reality is PGA Tour players who you’ve never heard of near the bottom of the money list are struggling to keep their tour card and still have roughly a +4 handicap which is 4 shots better than scratch!
Becoming a scratch Golfer requires you to put in three to 4 hours a day 5 times a week, and these bottom of the pile PGA pros are WAY better than scratch!
If you become a pro you need to travel and shoot low numbers on courses you are not familiar with, courses with narrow fairways, tall rough and fast greens this is NOT easy!
The mentality to compete at that level requires a strong head and mental resilience, you might hit 58 in a practice round but performing week on week whilst paying for your travel and barely making ends meet is another story altogether. Not everyone gets to be Tiger Woods!
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The only way you can become a successful Golfer in the words of ProTourCollege is by reaching the pinnacle of Golf only practicing long hours for many hours honing your craft and developing competitive powers.
Unless you’ve played competitive Golf since you were a child/teenager you cannot catch up to others who put in that 1728 hours of practice per year, not including the competitive practice of getting into the habit of winning and competing against others in stressful situations.
The only chance you’d have is spending the next 5-10 years practicing 12 hours a day to have a glimmer of hope of achieving the Golf required to play on tour.
This isn’t taking account of your physical or mental attitude and the knowledge of thinking your way around a course and believing you will succeed cannot be taught, only learned through experience.
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What Do You Need To Become A Professional Golfer?
Talent
You must have a natural talent for ANY hope of becoming a professional Golfer at 30, losing strokes when you have a higher handicap is easy but the lower your handicap becomes the more difficult it is to reduce it.
Even going from 10 to an 8 is way more difficult than going 36 to 18, imagine the struggle in going from scratch to -4!
Background Of Winning
Winning like anything is a habit and takes time to develop, whilst likely you haven’t been winning Golf tournaments as a kid having the habit of success whether in sports or business will translate well to Golf.
If you haven’t made winning a habit in life, then it won’t be easy to pick up the success habit in Golf.
Time & Money
Are you living finically free without an obligation to work? That’s the only chance you’ll have in becoming Pro.
No matter what work you do, even as a Golf instructor or working at a Golf club will get in the way of essential 5-10 hours of daily practice, you’ll need to be hitting balls and working on your short game & competing at least 6 days a week for many years so time is essential.
To see why Golf is such an expensive sport check out my post here.
Coaching
Not everyone can be Bubba Watson and claim to never have had any lessons and just get by with pure Golfing talent, he’s a one-in-million Golfer. You’ll need a Swing coach and a mental coach.
No other book you can buy will prepare you better for the task at hand than Paper Tiger by Tom Coyne, an obsessed Golfers quest to play with the Pros it will inspire or scare you, but you should find it helpful.
Pick it up for the best price on Amazon here.
How Much Practice Do You Need To Become A Professional Golfer?
You need to invest a minimum of 1728 hours per year to become a Professional Golfer. This is 6 hours of practice per day for 6 days per week for 48 weeks per year.
Golf like all other pursuits in life, it’s a lack of drive to practice to more than the majority that sets people back.
“Every time you stay out late; every time you sleep in; every time you miss a practice session; every time you don’t give 100%… you make it that much easier for another golfer to beat you.”
According to ProGolfCollege they expect their students to average 6 hours of practice every day from Monday to Friday during college time, and to practice outside of those hours as well.
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They measure the total minutes of each training routine (segment time) that they practice during those 6 hours and expect the total minutes of their routines when divided into 6 hours to be better than 80%, this means no looking at Instagram, or talking during practice!
To see how a College Golf athlete practices check out this link, a former student of there’s Saw Crawford over a 70-week period took more than ver the 70 week period more than 86,500 golf strokes, not including training drills and training games!
I hope you understand the dedication requires to become a professional Golfer, starting at 30 regardless of when you started playing Golf, you need to practice between 5-10 hours per day 5 times (probably more) a week to have even a small chance of becoming pro!
Over the 70-week period, Sam took more than 86,500 golf strokes, not including training drills and training games.
What Are The Odds Of Becoming A Professional Golfer?
The odds of becoming a PGA professional Golfer are more than 250:1.
However, it depends on what you mean by professional, in the PGA tour there are only 150 players who secure the right to play, as there are roughly 25 million Golfers in the United States. That is 0.000006% of Golfers!
If we’re talking about any tour like the European tour you’re looking at around 1000 so 0.00004% better odds but not much better! If we’re talking any member of the PGA of America such as club pros we’re speaking about 29,000 so 0.00116%
Only 1.6% of players of 2 million registered handicap players are scratch or better which is around 32,000 golfers.
