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Golf's All-Time Biggest Phenoms

By Alex Myers

We take a look at some of the most talented youngsters to ever burst onto the scene

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Photo by Ocean Forest Golf Club/Caroline Norman
Bobby Jones
Jones first became a known quantity on the national stage when he made the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur at age 14 in 1916. He won the first of three Southern Amateurs a year later and began representing the U.S. in international competitions (before the creation of the Ryder Cup) by the age of 17. Jones, a lawyer by trade, never turned professional and retired at the young age of 28. Yet, he is widely considered one of the greatest golfers of all-time.
AP Photo
Jack Nicklaus
Beginning at age 12, Nicklaus won five straight Ohio State Junior titles before carrying that success over into college. While at Ohio State University in 1961, he became the first player to win the U.S. Amateur Championship and NCAA individual championship in the same year. He also won the 1959 U.S. Amateur and nearly captured the1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills while still an amateur. Obviously, the professional ranks weren't a problem, either. Nicklaus' first win came at the age of 22 at the 1962 U.S. Open and he would go on to claim a record 18 major championships.
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Ben Crenshaw
After winning three straight NCAA Championships at the University of Texas and a bevy of other amateur events, Crenshaw turned pro at the age of 21 and promptly won Q School by 12 shots. It didn't end there, though, as he won the San Antonio Texas Open, his first PGA Tour event after earning his card, and then was runner-up in his second tournament. His winning pace would slow down, but Crenshaw still wound up with 19 career tour titles, including a pair of green jackets.
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Seve Ballesteros
The Spaniard turned pro when he was 16 in 1974. In 1976 he won his first European Tour event by eight shots and led the tour's Order of Merit. Ballesteros also finished runner-up at the British Open that year and won his first major at the 1979 British Open at 22. The following year, he became the youngest winner of the Masters (a record Tiger Woods broke in 1997), claiming the green jacket just four days after his 23rd birthday.
Steve Powell/Getty Images
Phil Mickelson
Like Crenshaw, Mickelson was a three-time NCAA champion as well as the winner of the 1990 U.S. Amateur. While still at Arizona State, he also won the 1991 Northern Telecom Open, becoming only the sixth amateur to ever win a PGA Tour event -- an accomplishment no one has matched since. It took him awhile to fulfill his promise in major championships, but he has won four since breaking through at the 2004 Masters.
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Tiger Woods
Beginning with an appearance on the Mike Douglas Show at the age of two, Woods' growth as a golfing prodigy has been well chronicled. His developmental period was defined by three straight U.S. Junior Championships, three straight U.S. Amateurs, and an NCAA title at Stanford. Woods would turn pro at his famous "Hello, World" press conference in 1996 and has rarely disappointed since. As big as the hype was when he finally arrived on the PGA Tour, he managed to equal or surpass all expectations.
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Sergio Garcia
In 1995, at the age of 15, Garcia became both the youngest player to ever make the cut at a European Tour event and the youngest to win the European Amateur. He won the 1999 British Amateur and then announced his arrival as a pro when he dueled with Tiger Woods over the final holes of the 1999 PGA Championship. He won two PGA Tour events when he was 21, but now in his 30s, Garcia's lack of major championship victories has made his career a disappointment.
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Ty Tryon
Of all the players on this list, Tryon has struggled the most to deliver on his early promise. At age 17, he became the youngest to earn a PGA Tour card by making it through Q School in 2001, but there haven't been many highlights since. Nearly a decade later, he qualified for the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, marking the first major championship appearance of his career.
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Michelle Wie
Like Woods, Wie has been in the spotlight for most of her life. In 2000, at age 10, she qualified for the Women's U.S. Public Links Championship and two years later became the youngest at the time to ever qualify for an LPGA event. Expectations soared in 2004, when at 14, she played against the men at the PGA Tour's Sony Open and missed the cut by one shot. That performance included a second-round 68, the lowest round ever shot by a woman on tour. To add to her growing legend, Wie had finished in the top three of all four LPGA major championships by the time she was 16. Wie wouldn't win a professional tournament until 2009, but started to find her groove after graduating from Stanford. In 2014, she won her first major, the U.S. Women's Open, at 24.
Scott Halleran/Getty Images
Rory McIlroy
McIlroy became the first player under the age of 20 to be in the top 20 of the world rankings. The native of Northern Ireland won his first European Tour event at 19 and claimed his first PGA Tour title two days before his 21st birthday with a final-round 62 at the 2010 Quail Hollow Championship. That year, he also finished third at both the British Open and PGA Championship, giving him a total of three third-place finishes in only eight career majors as a pro. After a final-round 80 at the 2011 Masters kept him from claiming his first major title, he bounced back by dominating the field in the U.S. Open at Congressional. McIlroy broke the tournament scoring record by four shots on his way to an eight-shot victory. With his win at the 2012 Honda Classic, the 22-year old became the youngest golfer other than Tiger Woods to reach No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
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Ryo Ishikawa
Ishikawa won his first Japanese Tour event at the age of 15 years and eight months, and the wins have been piling up ever since in his homeland. By 19 he had already won nine times in Japan, including a stunning 2010 win at The Crowns, where he shot a final-round 58. In 2009, while still not yet 18, he became the youngest player to compete in the Presidents Cup after being named a captain's pick by Greg Norman. He would go on to win three of his five matches at Harding Park in what will surely be his first of many times playing in the international event.
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Lexi Thompson
In 2007, Thompson, 12, became the youngest to qualify for the U.S. Women's Open. The next year, she won the U.S. Girls Junior Championship at 13. After turning pro at 15, she finished runner-up at the 2010 Evian Masters and won the 2011 Navistar LPGA Classic by five shots at 16 to shatter the tour's record for youngest-ever winner. She won her first major at the 2014 Kraft Nabisco Championship at 19.
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Matteo Manassero
Among the Italian sensation's age-related accomplishments are being the youngest player to ever win the British Amateur Championship, the youngest to make the cut at the Masters and the youngest to win a European Tour event when he won the 2010 Castello Masters at the age of 17 years, 188 days. After becoming the tour's youngest ever rookie of the year, he would pick up a second win two days before his 18th birthday at the Malaysian Open. A playoff victory over Louis Oosthuizen at the 2012 Singapore Open made him the first teenager with three European Tour titles.
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Lydia Ko
When she was still 14, the South Korean-born New Zealander became the youngest golfer, male or female, to win a pro tournament when she captured the Bing Lee/Samsung Women's NSW Open in January of 2012. That summer, at 15, Ko became the second-youngest winner of the U.S. Women's Amateur and then broke Lexi Thompson's record as the youngest winner in LPGA history by claiming the Canadian Open. At 17, her win at the 2014 CME Group Tour Championship earned her the biggest payday ($1.5 million) in women's golf history, and she became the youngest World No. 1 (male or female) in February of 2015. Seven months later, she became the youngest major winner (18 years, four months, 20 days) at the Evian Championship.
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Guan Tianlang
A 14-year-old making the cut at the Masters? Yeah, that happened. Despite a rare slow-play penalty in the second round, Guan surprised everyone by sticking around for the weekend and incredibly not three-putting any of Augusta National's treacherous greens for the week. In his encore two weeks later at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, Guan made the cut again.
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Jordan Spieth
After one year at the University of Texas, Spieth started the 2013 season as a 19-year-old with no status on any professional tour. By the end of that campaign, however, he was the PGA Tour's undisputed Rookie of the Year and a member of the U.S. Presidents Cup team. A victory at the 2013 John Deere Classic (left) made him the youngest winner on tour in 82 years and started a hot stretch of golf that saw him finish 10th on the money list. And it doesn't appear like he'll suffer a sophomore slump. Spieth started 2014 with a runner-up at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions.
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Lucy Li

Li, 11, became the youngest qualifier for the U.S. Women's Open in 2014, breaking the record set by Lexi Thompson when she was 12. But even at such a young age, Li has already proven she's no one-hit wonder. In 2013, she became the youngest participant in the U.S. Women's Amateur, and earlier in 2014, she won her age division at the inaugural Drive, Chip and Putt Championship (above) at Augusta National.

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Nelly Korda

The daughter of former tennis grand slam champion Petr Korda, Nelly began her golf career in the shadow of older sister Jessica. But after winning her first major and Olympic gold in 2021, she looks on her way to passing both. Before that truly breakout season, though, she made the cut at the U.S. Women's Open a week before her 15th birthday, earned her LPGA Tour card at 19 and won her first LPGA title at 20 after deciding to turn pro out of high school. Yeah, seems like she made the right choice.

David Cannon, David Cannon, David Cannon
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Jack Dempsey, NCAA Photos
Akshay Bhatia

One of the most dominant golfers on the junior circuit in recent times, Bhatia turned pro at 17 instead of playing in college. After a couple years of mixed results, though, he broke through with a win at the 2022 Bahamas Great Exuma Classic. With the win, Bhatia joined Jason Day and Sungjae Im as the only two teenagers to win on the Korn Ferry Tour. Considering how their careers have turned out, this young man appears to have a bright future ahead of him.

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