Gordon Sargent may only be entering his third year of college, but the 20-year-old Vanderbilt junior is already turning heads on the biggest stages with his prodigious length and speed.
In his two PGA Tour starts this season, both majors (Masters and US Open), Sargent has averaged 323.9 yards off the tee and 125.6 clubhead speed. Those numbers would rank second and third, respectively, on the PGA Tour.
Sargent will tee it up in this week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic – and he might find it difficult to be the longest player not just in the field but in his group.
Full-field tee times from Rocket Mortgage Classic
Brandon Matthews and Matti Schmid will be grouped with Sargent for each of the first two rounds at Detroit Golf Club, where they’ll tee off at 2:11 pm ET in Thursday’s first round. Matthews is second on Tour in driving distance (321.8 yards) while Schmid is fourth (315.8 yards). Matthews is also second in clubhead speed (126.38 mph), behind only Cameron Champ (126.5), and ball speed (189.55), also behind Champ (190.71).
“I’ve just played the back nine so far, and it seems like there’s some bunkers where if the wind’s right, you can cover them with driver and get some scoring clubs in your hand,” Sargent said Tuesday, “but it’s also obviously pretty tree-lined, you can get kind of blocked out. I think if you’re driving it well, then there’s a lot of holes where you can kind of push it up there and get yourself in a really good position, so that’s where the driver’s going to come into use. And if it stays this soft, kind of I guess makes the fairways a little wider just knowing it’s not going to release as much.
“Yeah, so far I feel like you can hit a lot of drivers out there, and tried to do that today. I feel like that’s my game plan so far.”
Sargent ready to launch lots of drivers at Rocket Mortgage Classic
Sargent has never played in a regular Tour event prior to this week, but there is a little more on the line for this debut than past ones. The world’s top-ranked amateur is coming off a T-39 at Los Angeles Country Club, where he was the US Open’s low amateur a couple of weeks ago. That performance earned him two PGA Tour University Accelerated points, moving him to 16. He will receive two more points once he plays the Walker Cup in September (he was officially named to the US team last week), and he’s likely to qualify for the World Amateur Team Championship in October, which would come with an additional point.
That would leave Sargent just a point away from the 20 required to earn a PGA Tour card for next summer – or the following summer should Sargent defer it and return to school for his senior year. He can earn a point for every Tour cut made, so with him playing RMC and also in next week’s John Deere Classic, he’s got ample opportunity.