Junior Golf Expenses

[AJ3Golf]

 

Our junior golfer is ranked in top 125 for his class on JGS, is a rising freshman in highschool next year, and has college commit goals over the next 4 years.  Willingly, we have been paying for his GOLF tours since he was seven years old ( so 7 years ) it's great to get some help knowing the expenses are increasing each year. 

 

What are we allowed to accept in contributions outside of family, for his golf expenses that won't disqualify him from D1 college,  or high school playability for that matter.

 

We have a few people that are very close to our family who would like to help us in the future expenses of our son until he graduates from high school.

 

I know that rules have changed things quite a bit, we just want the help for golf expenses for equipment and tournaments.

 

Our son plans to compete in about 18-20 ranked tournaments a year that will require 3 days of travel per event, from now until his senior year. Total with his coaching, equipment,  and travel tournaments are exceeding $40K a year. 

 

[BallsBreakFast]

My understanding is that there are essentially 3 buckets for rules that need to be navigated  -  amateur status, NCAA eligibility, and high school participation rules (which vary by state).  The rules apply not just to amounts of money received and the source, but also the activity (if any) that are associated with receipt of the funds.

For the first one, see here (if you have not already seen):  https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/articles/2010/02/helping-junior-golfers-with-expenses-55305.html

Its an old article but afaik still applies. 

Edited January 20 by BallsBreakFast

[AJ3Golf]

Thank you! I did read that piece. It seems that as long as it is only expenses, not pay to play or company logos, and we can prove that with statements and receipts, we are within guidelines.  

 

I also realize that we have some work to do in rankings. He has been playing up for a year, @6800 yards, going thru a big growth spurt, and a swing/grip change.  Our coach is fantastic and has known our son since he was a baby, but only started coaching him last year.   

 

We are on X and Instagram : @AJ3Golf 

 

Thanks for your help!! 

 

 

[kiddoc]

I would be more cautious about how much school he will be missing than the source of the money.

 

You may have already considered that before charting his tournament schedule 

 

[wegobomber31]

It’s great that you are mapping out this journey and have the support of others. All the best to your son. I’d advise to treat the journey of getting better at golf and seeing how good you can be as the ultimate reward. 
 

given his current ranking I’m not seeing the urgency to travel outside the region. And 36-hole events are probably fine. I’d look at 2027‘s and 2028’s ranked ahead of your son in the state — where did the majority of them play last year? That can give a nice road map of where to play as your son advances in the game. 
 

 

 

[golferdad8]

He looks like a fine golfer & you seem like a super supportive dad- it’s great to see your positivity. 
 

Agree w @wegobomber31 & his tips to focus on “keep getting better” & use a few roadmaps of successful older kids (pick good locals and even amateur events) to follow. We’ve seen lots of golfers peak in 9th or 10th grade as they face burnouts, injuries, and fatigue/injuries, ie. top 5 players fall to 200+ by 11th grade, and conversely top 200 players get to top 25 (focused on the process of getting better, cross train, and play loose). 
 

Also, while there’s an ideal time to peak (on ranking) for recruiting purposes (spring sophomore going into fall junior), given the competitive nature of college golf becoming more serious (coaches dropping verbally committed recruits before signing day), I’ve seen many players’ performance decline due to the distractions from recruiting visits, keeping up with school (esp if pursuing a top academic college), and studying for standardized tests…while still trying to keep up with playing junior AND amateur tournaments. 
 

Finally, it sounds like you’re from a family of believers (you shared your IG). Although your son is young & not in college yet, try to listen to podcasts with college golf fellowship with him & reach out to CGF - sometimes they will allow high school kids to attend their (free) retreats. Great speakers, Christian golfers/PGA players and mentors for your son. Golf is not easy - and to have long term success (& sanity), it’s important that golf not be his (or your family’s) identity. 

 

GL & enjoy the ride - it’s a special journey & it goes by quickly! 

[golfdad1]

13 hours ago, wegobomber31 said:

It’s great that you are mapping out this journey and have the support of others. All the best to your son. I’d advise to treat the journey of getting better at golf and seeing how good you can be as the ultimate reward. 
 

given his current ranking I’m not seeing the urgency to travel outside the region. And 36-hole events are probably fine. I’d look at 2027‘s and 2028’s ranked ahead of your son in the state — where did the majority of them play last year? That can give a nice road map of where to play as your son advances in the game. 
 

 

 

Bingo. Everything he said. There really isn't the need to do 18-20 tournaments and travel a ton.

[TroyB123]

People who live in large golf metro areas (ie,  SoCal/Dallas/Southern Florida/etc) take for granted that they can plan lots of junior and/or amateur tournaments without travel.

 

If you live in Carolinas/Virginia, you'll be lucky to have even 2-3 tournaments within an hour drive per year.   Depending on where you live, there will be a few in the 1.5-2.5 hour range, but then you have to decide if you'd really want to do that drive 6 times in 3 days for a 2-day tournament and practice round.

 

Look at a regional tour like this https://www.tarheelgolf.org/Tournament  and you can see how spread apart all the events are.

[LawGenius305]

18-20 is way too many tournaments. I would scale down to 12-14.

[AJ3Golf]

On 1/20/2025 at 9:51 AM, wegobomber31 said:

It’s great that you are mapping out this journey and have the support of others. All the best to your son. I’d advise to treat the journey of getting better at golf and seeing how good you can be as the ultimate reward. 
 

given his current ranking I’m not seeing the urgency to travel outside the region. And 36-hole events are probably fine. I’d look at 2027‘s and 2028’s ranked ahead of your son in the state — where did the majority of them play last year? That can give a nice road map of where to play as your son advances in the game. 
 

 

 

Great advice! Thank you! 

[AJ3Golf]

On 1/21/2025 at 9:26 AM, LawGenius305 said:

18-20 is way too many tournaments. I would scale down to 12-14.

Last year he played 17, in addition to his varsity team golf.  Crazy: Some kids play 25, which seems over the top. We will plan at least 1 per month until Summer, when he's out of school. Thanks! 

[AJ3Golf]

On 1/21/2025 at 9:21 AM, TroyB123 said:

People who live in large golf metro areas (ie,  SoCal/Dallas/Southern Florida/etc) take for granted that they can plan lots of junior and/or amateur tournaments without travel.

 

If you live in Carolinas/Virginia, you'll be lucky to have even 2-3 tournaments within an hour drive per year.   Depending on where you live, there will be a few in the 1.5-2.5 hour range, but then you have to decide if you'd really want to do that drive 6 times in 3 days for a 2-day tournament and practice round.

 

Look at a regional tour like this https://www.tarheelgolf.org/Tournament  and you can see how spread apart all the events are.

Agree, tough to get to many ranked events without some travel.  We play Tarheel, as well as CGA, so hope those fill at least 1/2 of our events. Strength of field and course ratings matter too, so AJGA if he qualifies this season.  Thanks for your advice. 

[AJ3Golf]

On 1/20/2025 at 10:20 AM, golferdad8 said:

He looks like a fine golfer & you seem like a super supportive dad- it’s great to see your positivity. 
 

Agree w @wegobomber31 & his tips to focus on “keep getting better” & use a few roadmaps of successful older kids (pick good locals and even amateur events) to follow. We’ve seen lots of golfers peak in 9th or 10th grade as they face burnouts, injuries, and fatigue/injuries, ie. top 5 players fall to 200+ by 11th grade, and conversely top 200 players get to top 25 (focused on the process of getting better, cross train, and play loose). 
 

Also, while there’s an ideal time to peak (on ranking) for recruiting purposes (spring sophomore going into fall junior), given the competitive nature of college golf becoming more serious (coaches dropping verbally committed recruits before signing day), I’ve seen many players’ performance decline due to the distractions from recruiting visits, keeping up with school (esp if pursuing a top academic college), and studying for standardized tests…while still trying to keep up with playing junior AND amateur tournaments. 
 

Finally, it sounds like you’re from a family of believers (you shared your IG). Although your son is young & not in college yet, try to listen to podcasts with college golf fellowship with him & reach out to CGF - sometimes they will allow high school kids to attend their (free) retreats. Great speakers, Christian golfers/PGA players and mentors for your son. Golf is not easy - and to have long term success (& sanity), it’s important that golf not be his (or your family’s) identity. 

 

GL & enjoy the ride - it’s a special journey & it goes by quickly! 

Yes!  We are believers, and our identity is not in the game, only to reach for the prize and trust the Lord with the ultimate results.  CGF is on our radar, and he listens to Bible Caddie every Friday.  Thanks for your support! ☺️

[LawGenius305]

8 hours ago, AJ3Golf said:

Last year he played 17, in addition to his varsity team golf.  Crazy: Some kids play 25, which seems over the top. We will plan at least 1 per month until Summer, when he's out of school. Thanks! 

Once you add in HS matches, USGA Qualifiers, State Qualifiers, AM events, more than 14 ranked junior events is just too many. My kids went through it and both played college. College Coaches are going to be as interested and some more interested in the AM events over the junior events.

[BallsBreakFast]

You should also consider playing smaller local competitions (even one-days) at your club or public courses or anywhere convenient - play not for ranking purposes but just to work on game-mental mode. Play to try going as low as possible irrespective if a weak field. Including events where he is expected to win is a very different kind of pressure vs. being the underdog and chasing. At some point as he continues to progress, he will be viewed as one of the favorites and the pressure will be taking leads and continue building upon them, and not playing safe to preserve.  Many kids do fine when they are the underdog and not expected to contend, but struggle when they are expected to win (even if parents are not the ones putting on the pressure).

[wegobomber31]

2 hours ago, LawGenius305 said:

Once you add in HS matches, USGA Qualifiers, State Qualifiers, AM events, more than 14 ranked junior events is just too many. My kids went through it and both played college. College Coaches are going to be as interested and some more interested in the AM events over the junior events.

I think 15 is a nice sweet spot. My son played 17 last year (plus maybe 4 one-day qualifiers? but is able to drop a couple from last year. I don’t think he found it to be excessive; in fact he’s probably itchy and anxious to play more. That’s probably a good thing. 

[LawGenius305]

4 hours ago, wegobomber31 said:

I think 15 is a nice sweet spot. My son played 17 last year (plus maybe 4 one-day qualifiers? but is able to drop a couple from last year. I don’t think he found it to be excessive; in fact he’s probably itchy and anxious to play more. That’s probably a good thing. 

I won't disagree. Once you get into the high teens and 20's just way too many.

[BallsBreakFast]

On 1/20/2025 at 11:23 AM, AJ3Golf said:

...I also realize that we have some work to do in rankings...

If ranking improvement is a primary goal, then playing too many events without purposefully working on mental and skill improvements in between risks stalling rankings and will make rank improvements more challenging in the future.  We usually target playing an event every 3-4 weeks during the school year (for many reasons) then for the summer our kid will play 5-6 events over 2 mos.  We've found this pace about right for building fundamentals and steady improvements. Last year she played about 15 strokeplay events (around 42-43 competition rounds) plus a few additional matchplay games and that felt like a full schedule.

Edited January 24 by BallsBreakFast

[DannysDad]

AK3, interesting post. I was waywhen you say 18-20 tournaments are these multi day events? I assume so but you know what happens when we assume…

 

thanks!

Edited March 18 by DannysDad

[TroyB123]

It's not always easy to plan a certain amount of tournaments, and stick to it for a still developing golfer.   Some regionals tours around here have very early sign up dates and sell out quickly.   

 

Thinking back to last year, we signed up for what I thought was a reasonable amount of those events, and then he unexpectedly got into a couple AJGAs and other big tournaments I thought were longshots.  We picked up a couple late announced tournaments because they were local to us, and all of a sudden that number crept up quite a bit from the original plan.

 

Dropping events that have some sunk costs in non-refundable tourney fees or accommodations is often a tough call.

 

 

 

[MahalNeneng]

Being practically done with junior golf now i can say that if you need affirmation 8-10 is more than enough to get into top 50 of class. 
if your looking to climb that ladder looks as if 12-17 seems to be the number. 
having said that there are a couple that have the good fortune of doing 5-7 year and getting their rank up (cant miss a beat though)

[jda]

On 1/19/2025 at 6:19 PM, AJ3Golf said:

 

Our junior golfer is ranked in top 125 for his class on JGS, is a rising freshman in highschool next year, and has college commit goals over the next 4 years.

 

What kind of college are you looking at?  What you need to do depends on the level that interests you.  We have sent kids to very good academic D3 schools with not much more than HS golf scores (and the grades) whereas others play as many Junior events as possible to try and get into Arizona St or Texas (and often don't make it).

 

Without knowing if any money will be available for golf scholarships in the future, I would consider trying to optimize spending on junior golf vs saving for paying for college out of pocket.

 

If the kid LOVES it and you all enjoy it as a family, then that is different.  Bonding and enjoying this time is worth every penny if you can afford it.

[MahalNeneng]

PTO?

every two day tourney is 1 within driving distance every three day is 2. Big tourneys during week could be 3-5 x 18-20

i know during our run at recruiting i burnt through mine easily with 12-14 events. 

[Golfquant]

our family had almost 120 hotel nights in 2024 for our 2 kids (1 golfer, 1 other sport)

 

they did exclusively compete in national or very competitive regional events, almost all of which required travel, but they did NOT compete in more tournaments than average compared to peers for their ranking/age/sport

 

while that number is anomalously high, I think our 2025 nights will still be 80-100

 

save up

[Ray Jackson]

On 3/19/2025 at 6:55 AM, MahalNeneng said:

Being practically done with junior golf now i can say that if you need affirmation 8-10 is more than enough to get into top 50 of class. 
if your looking to climb that ladder looks as if 12-17 seems to be the number. 
having said that there are a couple that have the good fortune of doing 5-7 year and getting their rank up (cant miss a beat though)

We have just realized that limiting the number of tournaments to just the big events per year means you have to be 'on' every time and its cost my son so far this year. A few more lower level tournaments where he has to play well but not great is what we are now adding to the schedule. 

[golferdad8]

If one can’t win locally, perhaps it doesn’t make sense to be chasing stars all over the country. Once in a while it’s good to compete w top juniors as it’s a good experience. However, one can get the same experience playing “up” in local amateurs. IMHO, it’s important to both golf well & have strong course mgmt. Many kids are good technically but lack the maturity to perform at the next level. If that’s important, playing lessons or low $ gambling w older kids are the best way to get to the next level. 

[MahalNeneng]

On 5/8/2025 at 12:37 PM, Ray Jackson said:

We have just realized that limiting the number of tournaments to just the big events per year means you have to be 'on' every time and its cost my son so far this year. A few more lower level tournaments where he has to play well but not great is what we are now adding to the schedule. 

Thats really the determining factor isnt it?
Top 25 players tend to put up 1.5-2 red rounds out of 3. Top 50 1-2. Consistency  is the separator. The lower the % the more often you have to play to hit all the factors. 

[MB19]

On 5/8/2025 at 10:51 PM, golferdad8 said:

If one can’t win locally, perhaps it doesn’t make sense to be chasing stars all over the country. Once in a while it’s good to compete w top juniors as it’s a good experience. However, one can get the same experience playing “up” in local amateurs. IMHO, it’s important to both golf well & have strong course mgmt. Many kids are good technically but lack the maturity to perform at the next level. If that’s important, playing lessons or low $ gambling w older kids are the best way to get to the next level. 

There's a flip side to this, of course.

 

Living between the Orlando and Palm Beach hubs of junior golf, almost anywhere else we go (with obvious exceptions) we're playing against shallower player pools.  While I value the fact that my kids are growing up playing against USKG Local fields with 4-6 kids who go to Worlds (UA and USKG in many cases) most years, there have been times when we've traveled a little farther to get a confidence W.  In poker, this is called "bum hunting"--finding games to rebuild/pad your bankroll and confidence against lesser competition.  I know I've seen this a bit in golf with DCP, where kids are taken out of their region to get an easier path to the Augusta, and I have to think this also happens in trying to qualify for notable junior tournament series and bigger events.

 

What you said is absolutely founded in great reasoning, for sure.  There's also another side of that coin.

[Llortamaisey]

1 hour ago, MB19 said:

There's a flip side to this, of course.

 

Living between the Orlando and Palm Beach hubs of junior golf, almost anywhere else we go (with obvious exceptions) we're playing against shallower player pools.  While I value the fact that my kids are growing up playing against USKG Local fields with 4-6 kids who go to Worlds (UA and USKG in many cases) most years, there have been times when we've traveled a little farther to get a confidence W.  In poker, this is called "bum hunting"--finding games to rebuild/pad your bankroll and confidence against lesser competition.  I know I've seen this a bit in golf with DCP, where kids are taken out of their region to get an easier path to the Augusta, and I have to think this also happens in trying to qualify for notable junior tournament series and bigger events.

 

What you said is absolutely founded in great reasoning, for sure.  There's also another side of that coin.

‘Bum Hunting’ sounds like my dating strategy in college. 

[golferdad8]

3 hours ago, MB19 said:

 I know I've seen this a bit in golf with DCP, where kids are taken out of their region to get an easier path to the Augusta, and I have to think this also happens in trying to qualify for notable junior tournament series and bigger events.

My son didn’t golf until later than most kids so we didn’t deal w as many kids who succeeded at young ages, but we did  meet many who peaked at ages 12-14 and it’s actually quite sad to witness.
 

While some had above average short games which enabled them to win frequently at an early age when the courses were shorter, I found many of kids lost their love for the game (perhaps as soon as they stopped winning?) My best advice is to help your kids love getting better & love the game - the results will take care of themselves.