Why Isn’t Bobby Wyatt One Of Golf’s Best Young Gun Players?

The PGA Tour is littered with next golf phenom stories. Yesterday we profiled the latest “can’t miss” prodigy Norman Xiong. But for every touted player, there are scores more who didn’t fulfill the hype. The University of Alabama’s All-American Bobby Wyatt is (so far) surprisingly one of the latter.

GolfWorld’s Brian Wacker bangs out a revealing and worthy read on what happened.

Bobby Wyatt had always pictured himself as a PGA Tour golfer and from an early age had the look of one. 

In addition to the 57 and his college success at ’Bama, where he was a first-team All-American as a senior, Wyatt won the much-ballyhooed Sunnehanna Amateur, whose list of champions include everyone from Ben Crenshaw to Rickie Fowler; took medalist honors in the stroke-play portion of the 2012 U.S. Amateur; and went unbeaten inWalker Cup, tallying a team-best 3½ points as the U.S. thumped Great Britain & Ireland, 17-9.

“It was pretty freakish how good he could hit the ball,” said Justin Thomas, who was a teammate of Wyatt’s in Tuscaloosa and has, among things, watched him twice make a hole-in-one. “When he would get going with his ball-striking, it was unbelievable. It made that perfect noise and he left those perfect dollar-bill divots. Sometimes I’d just sit on the range and watch him hit that perfect 5-yard draw over and over and over.”

Instead of joining Thomas and fellow Crimson Tide teammates Trey Mullinax and Tom Lovelady at TPC Louisiana this week, however, Wyatt is 700 miles north, at Victoria National Golf Club in Newburgh, Ind., (population 3,325) where, without any status on any major tour and ranked outside the top 1,000 in the world, he had to Monday qualify just to get into the Web.com Tour’s United Leasing & Finance Championship. It might as well be a million miles from New Orleans.

‘There’s a fine line trying to get better and sticking with what got you where you are. I did a bad job of fetchin’ and trying to get better immediately rather than steady progress.’ —Bobby Wyatt

PGA Tour life is rich with trappings—millions of dollars at stake each week, swanky hotels, luxury courtesy cars, fame. In the case of a hotshot up-and-comer, everybody wants a piece, too—agents, equipment reps, swing gurus, trainers, sport psychologists.

“It’s a little bit of a circus,” Wyatt said. “I wasn’t prepared. So many people are trying to help you, it’s dizzying. I got caught up in that.”

After turning pro in 2014, he failed to take advantage of six PGA Tour starts and couldn’t break through at Web.com Tour Q school. In turn, Wyatt played a haphazard mix of Monday qualifiers, mini-tours and a smattering of international events. He got that sponsor invite in 2016 to TPC Louisiana and flashed the promise that had given rise to such high hopes, but his play that week didn’t carry over. Wyatt failed to make the weekend in 19 of his next 31 starts, including 13 of 19 in 2017.

“It totally shocked me because of how good a player he is,” said Thomas, who has turned pro a year earlier and not only made his way on the PGA Tour, but reached an elite level.

It didn’t help that many of his peers—some of whom he had been better than or beaten in college—were having success. Smylie Kaufman, an unheralded player when he came out of LSU and turned pro the same year as Wyatt in 2014, won on the PGA Tour just a year in and the following season played his way into Sunday’s final twosome at the Masters. Then there was Thomas’ stratospheric rise, which has included eight PGA Tour wins, including a major championship, a FedEx Cup title and Player of the Year honors all at age 24.

“You have two emotions,” Wyatt said. “You’re excited for them, but at the same time think that could be you. I don’t know if jealousy is the right word, but it stung. Bad.”