What does it take to win a Major Championship in Golf? Well, obviously first of all a lot of talent. And also a lot of practice as it turns out.
All players who won one of the big four started to golf at a very young age. But do you actually have to start that young if you want to be a professional player?
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In this article we take a closer look at these questions. Winning a Major Championship always seems like the ultimate goal for professional players.
What’s fascinating is that players that haven’t won a Major for a long time in their career but came close often usually start winning several once they’ve the first under their belt.
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The graphic above shows how many years each of the professional players needed from starting out with golf until they won their first Major Championship.
What you might notice first is that all players started out with golf before the age of ten.
The average of years needed by these players to win a Major was about 24 years.
So it might be safe to say that if you want to win a Major Championship you have to invest at least that amount of time and lots of it as a professional player.
But to not crush any dreams immediately take a look at Ernie Els.
He started with golf being just eight years old and won his first Major just 15 years later at the US Open 1994.
Do you have to start young to get any good at golf?
It depends. If you are shooting for that professional carreer in golf it would be good if you had started at an age before 10 (If you take a look at the graphic again).
But let’s be honest no one in their right mind makes that kind a decision at that age.
So this might be more in the hands of talent scouts and the parents of the child.
But hey, for children golf is mostly about having lots of fun and not about winning or being obsessed with improvement. Guess there are lessons to be learned for older people as well.
On the other hand golf can be played on a very high level up to higher ages. Take Jack Nicklaus for example.
He won the Masters at the age of 46 in 1986.
So if you deduct the 24 nessecary years of golf we calculated above from the age of 46 we get 22 years as a possible starting age.
Well that’s just playing with numbers and leaving the fact aside that Nicklaus was the exception to every rule. But hey, you never know.
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