Golf Recruiting: 5 Things All Coaches Want to See

The college golf recruiting process seems to get more competitive (and complicated) each year. At the end of the day, here are the five things that can help you put your best foot forward as you communicate with coaches and explore your options…

 

Strong Resume

This is fairly obvious — coaches want great players who can directly contribute to the team’s success. As such, they want to see a strong college golf resume that includes scores from tournaments spanning the last year or more. They also want to see what kind of a student you are, so be sure to include your GPA and ACT/SAT scores. 

Gaining the experience to have a strong resume doesn’t happen overnight, so plan ahead and put some thought into the tournaments you’re selecting and the way you are practicing in between your events.

 

Desire

While your resume and tournament scores to date are a good indication of your current level of play, your desire and how hard you are willing to work to pursue your goals is one of the best predictors of your future success. Ultimately, that is what college coaches care the most about — your future success, i.e. the scores you are going to produce while you are on their team. 

Share your golf, academic, and personal goals with coaches, and make sure some of these goals apply to college golf. This shows coaches you are looking beyond the golf recruiting process and are genuinely interested in what comes next.

 

Self-Awareness

One quick way to kill your chances at a school is to demonstrate a lack of self-awareness with regard to your current level of play. Saying something like “ I know I can be the top player on your team” when you aren’t shooting the scores and don’t have the junior ranking that would make you a good candidate for the team, shows coaches that you don’t understand how good their team really is. It also indicates to a coach that you don’t know how much effort is required for you to close that gap. The coach sees red flags across the board and it makes them less likely to take the time to get to know you.

The flip-side of this is to say something like “I know I’m not quite at the level of your typical recruits [and here is my plan to help close that gap]”. This demonstrates that you understand what it takes to be recruitable and that you want to let your actions/scores do the talking.

 

Coachability

Similar to demonstrating desire, showing that you are coachable is a great way to indicate that your performance is likely to improve over time — you are more likely to keep improving if you are interested in learning.

So when you’re sharing tournament results with coaches, don’t just list scores and talk about what you did well, talk about what you learned. And if there is something that you are struggling with, ask the coach how he or she typically helps their players who are working on similar things. Not only does this approach demonstrate that you are coachable, but it also gets you some potentially really helpful feedback. It’s a huge win-win.

 

Good Communication Skills

Communicating well means:

• Writing clearly and succinctly
• Sharing the right information and answering questions directly
• Using proper grammar and punctuation
• Avoiding “ums” and “ahs” on the phone
• Being on time / responding in a timely manner
• Asking thoughtful questions
• Listening and really hearing what coaches are saying

The sum total of this gives coaches a sense of your overall maturity level and who you are as a person. Because college golf recruiting is getting more and more competitive (that is, it’s easier to find great golfers), qualitative factors are becoming bigger distinguishing factors.

How you approach this process makes a BIG difference. Coaches want great golfers who are also great people. Show the coach that you are both, and let your actions do the talking.

 

Want to learn more about what coaches look for and how you can better position yourself in the golf recruiting process? Check out my advising programs and reach out to schedule a call! I love talking to folks about their situation and offering advice whenever possible, regardless of whether we end up working together.