At the 2018 National Golf Coaches Convention in Las Vegas, I spent a lot of speaking to coaches about the recruiting process. Based on the feedback, I decided to do something a little different; look at the recruitment process from the perspective of the junior golfer. With the feedback I collected I created a 10-question survey with some interesting questions. Then with the help of the Junior Tour of Northern California (THANK YOU!), collected response from 57 junior golfers. Here are the questions and what I found:

Q1: What percent more would a mid-major school have to offer you for you to turn down an offer from a major conference school like UCLA, Stanford or University of Florida?

Average Answer: 62 percent

Q2: How many times does a coach have to watch you play 9 holes for you to feel like they are REALLY interested?

Average Answer: 8

Q3: How many college teams do you follow on social media?

Average Answer: 7

Q4: Would you commit to a school without meeting the coaches or team and touring the facilities?

Answer: 16 percent – YES  84 percent – NO

Q5: Would you prefer: A better coach, a better facility or a better team travel schedule?

Answer:

58 percent: better Coach
25 percent: Better Facility
17 percent: Better Travel Schedule

Q6: Would you pay to attend a one-day camp to interact with a coach of a school you are interested in?

82 percent – Yes
18 percent – No

Q7: What is the perfect age to make a commitment to play college golf?

Average Answer: 16 years old

We also asked players, what do you like most to see on social media from a college team? Since the question was qualitative, we got a range of answers but, in general, respondents wanted to see the team having fun/bonding/what the players are about, as well as the scores of the players (both in qualifying and tournaments).

Obviously, the average responses don’t necessarily tell the whole story. When looking closer at the numbers for example, I found that:

• 70 percent of players indicated that if a coach watches them 2-4 times, they know they are very interested
• 10 percent of players expected a coach to watch them 10 or more times to be very interested
• 30 percent of players follow 1 or less team on social media while only 10% follow more than 25

For me, the most notable take-aways from the survey were the fact that junior golfers put the biggest priority on the coach, over facilities and scheduling by a significant margin. While building facilities are important, Athletic Directors should balance the investment in facilities with bigger investments in coaches.

It was also shocking that 14 percent of junior golfers would commit to a school without visiting the campus? Speaking to coaches at the convention, our guesses were that this number would be very close to zero, however clearly, I was wrong.

Let’s hear from you, what are the questions you want to see in the next survey? Any of the results from this survey shock you? Please comment below!