This content was first published in Golf Journal, a quarterly print and monthly digital publication exclusively for USGA Members. To be among the first to receive Golf Journal and to learn how you can help make golf more open for all, become a USGA Member today.
Golf has something for everyone in 2024. At the elite level, there’s an abundance of rising talent (Rose Zhang! Ludvig Aberg!) and an unusual number of opportunities to view it (The Olympics! Bonus Solheim Cup!).
At the grassroots level, the game is rapidly becoming more available to more people, with new and noteworthy short and accessible courses, a proliferation of off-course options and an increasingly diverse array of role models attracting new players.
We came up with 24 reasons to love golf in 2024 – including a few behind-the-scenes initiatives that may never be visible to most players but should make all of us more excited than ever about the state of our game.
1) The Olympics
Sixty women and sixty men will represent their countries at Le Golf National in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France (home of the 2018 Ryder Cup), from Aug. 1-10. The top 15 players in the World Golf Rankings automatically qualify, with no more than four players per country; remaining spots will be filled by the highest-ranked players from countries that don’t already have two qualified players. Will 26-year-old Lydia Ko be the first golfer to medal in three Olympic Games? Will Nelly Korda and Xander Schauffele repeat their 2020 gold-medal performances? Will Scottie Scheffler make his Olympic debut? Tune in for quality competition and nonstop flag-waving.
2) Rose Zhang
She won the Grand Slam of women’s amateur golf: the U.S. Women’s Amateur, the U.S. Girls’ Junior, the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and the NCAA individual title (twice, for good measure). Then Rose Zhang left Stanford University to turn pro and became only the second woman to win in her LPGA pro debut, at the Mizuho Americas Open in June. (Beverly Hanson was the first, in 1951.) Now, all eyes are on the 20-year-old in her first full year on tour.
3) Revisions to the World Handicap System
As of January 16, the World Handicap System accepts a broader range of scores: 9-hole players no longer have to add a future 9 for their score to be counted; courses can be as short as 1,500 yards for 18 holes and 750 yards for 9 holes; and rounds cut short by weather (or sunset, or anything else) can be entered, with an expected score rather than net par used to calculate the differential. These changes will make it easier for the growing number of new golfers to get an accurate handicap… and start obsessing over it.
4) No golf course? No problem!
The National Golf Foundation reported that in 2023, “off-course” players exceeded on-course players for the second year in a row. And it’s not just TopGolf, which opened its 95th location in Mobile, Ala., in November and aims to get to 150 within five years: Mom-and-pops are getting in on the action. “This is how you beat the weather,” said Jeff Glodt, a longtime teaching pro who opened Loft & Lies in McMinnville, Ore., population 36,000, in October. Glodt believes the technology “has come to the point where it’s very comparable to what we do on the outdoor courses,” but is more accessible for nervous beginners, for players who don’t have the interest or ability to walk 18 holes, and for kids once they age out of Chuck E. Cheese.
5) The Kids are All Right
One million youngsters have started playing golf since the pandemic – and many of them are crushing it. In 2023, U.S. Kids Golf had to add a second course for its Boys 10s World Championship because so many kids met the qualifying standard. Likewise, the U.S. Junior Am nearly doubled its field size in 2021. Find a junior tournament near you and marvel at the level of play – and kids’ joy. John Kim, a U.S. Kids senior official, was following the leaders in the Girls 7-and-under division at Worlds, and saw one player nail her approach shot to 3 feet. He turned back to look for the inevitable fist pump… but she was showing her fellow competitors how to do a handstand. Which is great, Kim said: “We just want them to love playing the game.” It seems to be working. Worlds was one of 2,200 events that U.S. Kids Golf organized in 2023, engaging 29,000 players, up from 1,600 tournaments with 23,000 participants in 2021.
6) Happy 10th Birthday to Drive, Chip & Putt
On April 7, 80 junior golfers aged 7-15 who have made it through three rounds of competition will grace Augusta National the weekend before the Masters to hit two drives, two chips, and two putts – live on Golf Channel – in the hopes of being crowned national champion for their age group. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the competition, which is a joint initiative of the USGA, the Masters Tournament and the PGA of America. Past DCP champions include Akshay Bhatia, who earned his first PGA Tour win at the 2023 Barracuda Championship; and “The Short Game” star Alexa Pano, who scored her first LPGA Tour win on her 19th birthday at the ISPS Handa World Invitational last August.
7) More Money for Women Pros
The 2024 LPGA prize pool stands at a record $118 million. The Tour Championship purse will go up to $11 million from last year's $7 million, though that still trails the U.S. Women's Open at $12 million; 16 tournaments will be contested for at least $3 million. That’s a major boost, considering that just five years ago, in 2019, the total was $70 million. The average event purse of just over $3 million is still less than one-third of the PGA Tour’s, but it’s trending in the right direction.
8) Another World-Class Short Course
Short courses like The Cradle at Pinehurst Resort and The Hay at Pebble Beach have become big-time draws. Now Streamsong Resort in central Florida is getting in on the action with The Chain, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw (who designed one of the three full-size courses there). The Chain’s six-hole and 13-hole loops comprise mostly one-shot holes, ranging from 109 to 293 yards – but there’s no scorecard, so you be the judge. Instead of tee markers, there are large tee areas; winner of each hole gets to pick where to start the next hole. The Bucket, a 2.5-acre
putting green, is right next door.
9) The World Golf Hall of Fame Opens in Pinehurst
Want to see Jack Nicklaus’ MacGregor bag from the 1965 Masters? Or the shirt Annika Sorenstam wore in the first round of the 2003 Colonial, when she became the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event since 1945? How about Donald Ross’ slide rule, or Seve Ballesteros’ wedge from his first major victory, the 1979 Open Championship? Those artifacts and more will be on display in 2024 in the USGA’s recently christened Golf House. It’s really a homecoming for the collection: The World Golf Hall of Fame was founded in Pinehurst in 1974, but in 1998 moved to St. Augustine, Fla.
10) Tiger Woods, Forever
The golfer many consider the GOAT says he’s planning to play in at least one tournament a month this year. Will Tiger notch a 10th USGA championship before he turns 50 in 2025 and and becomes eligible to play in the 2026 U.S. Senior Open?
11) Steph Curry is Coming to the U.S. Open
Not to play (yet). At the World Golf Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony during the U.S. Open in June, the Golden State Warriors star is scheduled to receive the Charlie Sifford Award, created to honor those who have advanced diversity in golf. In 2019, Curry – a 3.4-handicap golfer – gave Howard University an undisclosed seven-figure, six-year grant to resurrect its golf program at the Division I level. The investment paid off: In 2023, the Howard men won their second consecutive PGA Works Collegiate Championship (the national title for Historically Black Colleges and Universities) by a whopping 57 strokes; the Howard women won the team title at the SAS Championship in Cary, N.C., and had three players named to the Women’s Golf Coaches Association All-American Scholar Team. (Curry’s relationship with Howard is chronicled in the ESPN series “Why Not Us: Howard Golf.”) In 2021, Curry launched Underrated Golf, a series of events for underrepresented teens consisting of five events at Lake Merced Country Club, with all expenses paid for participants.
12) Continued Growth in Adaptive Golf
The U.S. Adaptive Golf Alliance (USAGA) has grown from five founding member organizations in 2015 to 46 today, with no signs of slowing down in 2024. The USAGA creates opportunities for people with disabilities to play golf through modified rules or equipment, including by training adaptive golf instructors. Jonathan L. Snyder, the USAGA’s executive director, believes the stories that come out of adaptive golf are exactly what the world needs: “When you see these folks overcome their challenges by simply enjoying a game with others, it’s really heartwarming.” For its part, the USGA will conduct its 3rd U.S. Adaptive Open at Sand Creek Station in Newton, Kan., July 8-10. After two years of filling the field via rankings and past performance, this year's championship will feature qualifying at six sites across the country.
13) A Pioneer Reaches the Pinnacle
At the annual PGA Show in Orlando, Fla., in January, Oneda Castillo presented her thesis to an LPGA panel, formalizing her achievement of Master Professional status, the highest designation for LPGA professionals.
Castillo, 71, is only the second Black woman to reach this level, after Carrie Russell in 1983. Prior to her immersion in golf at age 31, Castillo worked as a machinist for TRW, manufacturing parts for nuclear reactors. She sees parallels between her previous and current vocations: one being an analytical mindset, the other being her rarity. “I always was in an industry where I was the only one,” as one of few women at TRW, and now as one of too-few people of color in golf. She laments golf’s lack of diversity because it discourages kids from taking up the sport: “To visualize doing something when you don’t see someone who looks like you, it just makes the journey tougher.”
Castillo’s thesis was inspired by Tigermania in the late 1990s. She interviewed dozens of junior golfers, their parents and coaches to understand the systemic barriers to people of color succeeding at golf’s highest levels. For historical perspective, she compared and contrasted the careers of Walter Hagen, who was white and of German descent, and Charlie Sifford, who was Black and barred from competing on the PGA Tour because of the PGA of America’s “Caucasians-only” clause, which was finally rescinded in 1961.
Her primary goal in writing the thesis? For someone to read it and “make a different decision about something in the golf world that might matter to some young people,” Castillo said.
14) The First Barrier-free Golf Course
Due to open in early summer in Minnesota, The Loop at Chaska will be the first course fully compliant with the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act – where “disability access is a core design feature,” said Tim Andersen. Andersen is a USGA volunteer Rules official and founder of Barrier Free Golf, the nonprofit building the course in partnership with the City of Chaska, and he credits his interest in adaptive golf to two of his sisters’ careers as special education teachers.
The Loop will have no bunkers; restrooms and shaded areas in convenient spots; easy transitions between parking lot, clubhouse and first tee; and single-rider carts with pneumatic tires that can traverse the whole course (including the greens) for adaptive players to keep pace with walking partners. “We want people to show up and say, ‘They knew someone like me was coming,’” said Andersen.
The course will also be complex enough to engage low-handicappers, with multiple tee boxes per hole and undulating greens. The Loop’s accessibility extends beyond its layout: it was designed to minimize maintenance costs (e.g., all grass except the greens will be mowed at a uniform height), so green fees will be kept to around $20 – plus Barrier Free Golf is arranging 4,000 discounted and 2,000 free rounds out of the 25,000 anticipated annually. The nonprofit’s leaders hope that The Loop is the first of many such projects, with Pinehurst a potential next site.
15) Pinehurst No. 10
April 3 will see the opening of the much-anticipated 10th course at Pinehurst Resort, the epicenter of U.S. golf – the first new, original 18-holer there since No. 8 opened in 1996. (No. 9 opened in 1988 as National G.C. and was purchased by Pinehurst in 2014.) No. 10 is 4 miles south of the main Pinehurst campus and was designed by the renowned Tom Doak with construction led by Angela Moser.
16) Improved Tech for Course Maintenance
It looks like a novelty glow-in-the-dark ball, but the GS3 is a critical tool for a more rigorous, data-driven approach to course maintenance, packed with sensors to calculate green speed, firmness, smoothness and trueness. The Deacon app (named after Arnold Palmer’s dad, a course superintendent of the Latrobe (Pa.) Country Club) is another USGA initiative to take the subjectivity and guesswork out of course maintenance, which means more efficient and effective use of resources. These new technologies “allow golf courses to tell a true and unbiased story,” said agronomist Jordan Booth, director of the USGA’s Course Consulting Service. When people charged with a course’s care “have separate opinions on how the course was playing, or what they should be doing, having some unbiased data can really help.”
17) A Bonus Solheim Cup
We don’t have to wait two years to see whether the USA can reclaim the trophy after 2023’s 14-14 tie at Finca Cortesin in Spain left it in Europe. The 2020 Ryder Cup was postponed one year due to COVID and will stick with odd years, so the Solheim Cup is moving to even years to avoid conflicts. All the better for fans – and for USA captain Stacy Lewis, who is hungry for a rematch sooner than later. It happens Sept. 13-15 at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va.
18) And… The Presidents Cup
September’s competition at Royal Montreal Golf Club will mark 30 years since The Presidents Cup was founded – and the first time since 2011 that the International team captain hails from the host country. Could this give an edge to Canadian Mike Weir and his squad? Well, maybe… but the USA is a heavy favorite to score its 10th straight victory.
19) Drama Kings
Men’s professional golf saw no shortage of drama in 2023, and 2024 promises no less intrigue. Young star Will Zalatoris is hungry for competition after back surgery cut short his season. Justin Thomas wants to rebound after a forgettable year. Players are looking for a life-changing victory similar to Wyndham Clarkʼs when he captured the 2023 U.S. Open for his first major title. Rory McIlroy resigned from the PGA Tour Policy Board, ostensibly to free up time to focus on his game, but he also has the looming debut of his TGL virtual league with Tiger Woods, now slated to launch in early 2025. And of course, there’s always Woods (see No. 10).
20) Progress on Water Conservation
The recent droughts in the Western and Southwestern U.S. demonstrate the potentially existential threat to golf in those regions. Last year, the USGA Green Section committed to investing $30 million over the next 15 years toward solutions that help courses reduce their water use by as much as 45 percent. In 2024, a few pilot projects will come online demonstrating the benefits of subsurface drip irrigation and increasingly sophisticated soil moisture sensors – tools that should appeal not just to courses already stricken by drought, but others that would realize cost savings and performance improvements as well as environmental benefits. Courses that can become more resilient by using less water are good for golfers and the environment alike.
21) Another Season of “Full Swing”
No need to re-binge the first season of the Netflix series that follows professional golf’s top male players into their cars, homes and private jets. New episodes will drop in 2024.
22) A Growing Pipeline of Course Care Workers
Like so many businesses, golf courses have been suffering from labor shortages. While some might dream of getting to spend their working hours on fairways and greens, the early mornings, holiday and weekend demands, coupled with unpredictability of pay and promotion pathways, have made course maintenance a tough sell as a profession. The Greenkeeper Apprenticeship Program is a new USGA initiative that aims to attract and retain more course care professionals by creating opportunities to earn portable credentials and predictable wage increases.
The second session, involving 20 students, is underway at Sandhills Community College in Southern Pines, N.C., in partnership with ApprenticeshipNC, the North Carolina Community College System and the U.S. Department of Labor. The USGA hopes this model program can be rolled out to other states, leading to a more diverse and knowledgeable workforce. Beyond course maintenance, the USGA’s Pathways Internship program provides college undergraduate and graduate students from historically underrepresented groups with on-site opportunities during the week of the U.S. Open.
23) The 1,000th USGA Championship
As the 19th century drew to a close, American sports began to formalize into leagues and national organizations. Golf was no exception: The USGA officially came into being (originally as the Amateur Golf Association of the United States) on Dec. 22, 1894, with the inaugural U.S. Amateur Championship, U.S. Open, and U.S. Women’s Amateur taking place the following year. The 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst will be the 1,000th USGA championship – and No. 1,001, the 44th U.S. Senior Open, will be a fitting return to Newport (R.I.) Country Club, where the first two events took place 129 years ago.
24) It’s a Leap Year
That means one extra day to play golf!
