Canadian golfer Matt Hill
Matt Hill grew up in the same town as Mike Weir and naturally sees Weir as a mentor. But if there's one aspect of Weir's career that Hill intends to avoid imitating, it's the long, grinding road to the PGA Tour.
Paying your dues? That's so yesterday for the young guns in professional golf.
The PGA Tour and golf worldwide is on a youth kick. As Hill was making his professional debut at the Memorial Tournament in June, 21-year-old Rickie Fowler led after three rounds before slipping to second place on Sunday, for one of five top-10 finishes in his rookie season.
His European equivalent is Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy, 21, who shot a final round 62 at Quail Hollow to beat Phil Mickelson by four shots earlier this year and tied a major championship record for lowest round in a major with a 63 at the British Open last Thursday.
In Asia, 18-year-old Ryo Ishikawa is already a seven-time winner on the Japanese PGA Tour with a round of 58 to his credit. Louis Oosthuizen, the newly-crowned British Open champion, is just 27.
"We've waited a long time but it's finally happening with the younger guys coming along," Jack Nicklaus said recently. "If you went back five or six years, Tiger was the only one under 30 who was winning at all - and the only player under 30 to have won more than once on the tour. [But]it just feeds itself. Once one of them goes, the others around him think, 'Hey, he's my friend and if he can do it, then I can too'."
That's Hill's approach, and even if this is his first RBC Canadian Open as a professional, he's here to do more than wave a Canadian flag or pick up some experience.
"I feel like my game is good enough to be out here right now," says Hill, the world's No.2-ranked amateur last year, who is playing at St. George's Golf and Country Club this week on a sponsor's exemption.
Hill, of Bright's Grove, Ont., will be taking his first stab at Q-school this fall, but doesn't expect to have to return six times like Weir did.
"I just have to make it happen," says Hill. "I want to be out here as soon as possible."
Golfers not named Woods aren't supposed to win on the PGA Tour until they've been bumped and bruised, the hard lessons paying off as they peak in their thirties. But this year, 10 golfers in their twenties have won already this season, an impressive statistical accomplishment considering only about 35 of the tour's 200-odd active players are in their 20s. Overseas it's a similar story as nine different 20-somethings have wins on major tours worldwide.
Among the twenty-somethings in the field this week are Hunter Mahan, Bill Haas, Kevin Na, Rickey Barnes, Camilo Villegas and Sean O'Hair, who played in the Weir charity event on Monday.
Fowler was expected to come but didn't enter after playing in the British Open last week. His success has inspired Hill, given that he beat Fowler several times during his collegiate career at North Carolina State, where Hill became the first Canadian to win the NCAA championship in 2009.
Theories for the rise of young talent range from a simple cyclical aberration, to expert coaching and skill development. In author Malcom Gladwell's era - 10,000 hours of focused practice as the path to mastery - the mystery of elite performance is less mystifying than in the past. Trial and error is out; a carefully-laid plan is in.
And as always in professional golf, there is the so-called Tiger Effect where the seeds planted by his success are just now being harvested in the form of bigger, stronger players who are comfortable treating golf like a power sport.
There is also a coming generation of players who have grown up watching an athlete in his twenties dominate the sport - Woods was just 21 when he won the Masters in record-setting fashion in 1997. His methodology, including an early exposure to expert golf instruction and a career-long focus on fitness, has become the standard for young players.
"From the standpoint of nutrition, fitness, time management and developing a better golf swing at a younger age, that is definitely going on," says Sean Foley, a Canadian golf instructor who counts 20-something Tour winners Hunter Mahan, Sean O'Hair and Justin Rose among his clients.
While a Canadian hasn't won the national championship since Pat Fletcher in 1954, the likes of Hill and Nick Taylor, who spent 20 weeks as the world's top-ranked amateur in 2009, have benefited from Golf Canada's national player development program. They've had the benefit of playing internationally as members of the Canadian national team and been given early exposure to high performance experts in fitness, sports psychology and coaching.
"When you see guys you've had success against do well out here, it definitely gives you confidence that you can do what they're doing," says Hill. "Golf is a game of confidence and confidence can take you a long way."