Another week in the books on the Tour and another PGA newcomer, Harris English, won a PGA Tour Event by taking the title at the St. Jude Classic in Memphis. English finished two shots ahead of elder statesman, Phil Mickelson, and two-time Tour winner, Scott Stallings. If it seems like the level of competition on the PGA Tour is tightening up, you’re right.

No longer can one of the world’s top-10 golfers stroll in expecting to win week-in and week-out on the PGA Tour. It seems more than ever that new and unknown golfers are climbing up the leader boards each week, and many have actually made a name for themselves.

Heck, in just a short amount of time, guys who were relative unknowns just a few years ago are the ones garnering much of the attention. Familiar names like Keegan Bradley, Brandt Snedecker, Dustin Johnson and Rickie Fowler have become mainstream in the past few years not just to those who follow Tour every week, but to fans outside the Tour’s core audience as well.

Since Harris English is just 23 years old, it is worth noting that he (and Derek Ernst just a few weeks ago, who won the Wells Fargo Championship) are the youngest players to have won on the Tour this year. Noting their young age, it made me wonder if we are seeing an uptick in younger players winning Tour events. So, I turned to the stats to find out!

English’s win represents the eighth win by a player in his 20s this year on Tour. Add that to the number of winners in their 20s the entire season last year, and the total is 23 players to have won in 70 total tournaments. That means that players in their 20s have won 33 percent of the events in the past 18 months. Here’s what else I found in sorting through the numbers based on age (rankings are based on 2013 earnings):

• Players in their 20s make up 30 percent of the Tour’s top 150 players.
• Of the top 150, the average age of a PGA professional is 33 years old.
• Players in their 20s have made the top 10 in a tournament 33 percent of the time (94 of 288).
• In fact, in just about all key categories (cuts made, top-10 finishes, earnings and events) players under 30 are carving out about 32 to 35 percent of the pie, just over what would be expected based on the percentage of Tour.

Digging deeper, a study performed by Texas A&M from 10 years ago concluded that golfers peak between the ages of 30 and 35. So, in this small sample, the numbers may be showing that the collective skill of professional golfers is trending younger. Granted, it’s not an earth-shifting amount based on the data above, but certainly worth noting.

Now, this may all be a bubble and the ship will right itself, but it does feel like the “Young Guns” are beginning to put their stamp on the PGA Tour even more now than has been the case in the past.

It’s a win on tour, but English is still free next weekend!

Following the win, English said that the most special part about the victory is that it has granted him the boyhood wish that he has always dreamed of: qualifying for the 2014 Masters. Being a native Georgian has to make it even that much more sweet when he makes the drive down to Augusta next April.  But, before English makes any plans to fly straight to Merion this weekend to lace them up for the U.S. Open, think again. Winning on the PGA Tour doesn’t automatically qualify a golfer for the U.S. Open. As a result, English’s schedule will remain free for Father’s Day weekend this year.

So, how does someone qualify for the U.S. Open? It’s complicated and the deck is pretty stacked against the newcomers, but there are numerous avenues for making it in. Here’s every way possible to make the field of 156 can make it in (and yes, weekend duffers…there is hope for you, as well!):

• Win a U.S. Open in the last 10 years.
• Win or finish runner-up in the previous year’s U.S. Amateur.
• Win the previous year’s Amateur Championship.
• Be the previous year’s top-ranked amateur golfer in the world.
• Win the Masters, British Open or PGA Championship in the last five years.
• Win one of the last three The Players Championships.
• Win the current year’s BMW PGA Championship.
• Win the last U.S. Senior Open.
• Finish in the top-10 and ties in the previous year’s U.S. Open.
• Qualify for the previous year’s Tour Championship.
• Be in the top-60 in the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) as of two weeks before the start of the tournament.
• Be in the top-60 in the OWGR as of the tournament date.
• All remaining spots after the second top-60 OWGR cutoff date filled by alternates from qualifying tournaments.

Whew!

So, with a field of 156 to fill each year’s U.S. Open, once all of those exemptions have filled-up, players with a handicap index of 1.4 or better are allowed to go through the qualifying process. It’s a two-stage process where first players must get through local qualifying in order to move on to Sectional qualifying.

In the Sectionals, the local qualifiers are joined by many of the leading players (who are exempted from needing to make through the locals). Thirty-six holes are played in one day across the U.S. (aka “Golf’s Longest Day”). Winners of these events have qualified for the U.S. Open, giving them a shot at their biggest and wildest dreams.

But don’t get your hopes too high, duffers. Think about it this way: English won the FedEx St. Jude Classic on June 9, but five days earlier shot 71-74 in a U.S. Open Sectional Qualifier to finish 37th, six shots out of an alternate spot that was earned by — get this — FexEx St. Jude Classic runner-up Scott Stallings.

So yes, you can be talented enough to win on the PGA Tour one day, but the next you might not be able to qualify for the U.S. Open. What a tough game!