Joaquin Niemann could be on the verge of his best year as a pro at just 22 years old - CBSSports.com
Joaquin Niemann could be on the verge of his best year as a pro at just 22 days old
Joaquin Niemann lost the 2021 Tournament of Champions in a playoff to Harris English on Sunday, but his runner-up attain may have been a harbinger of things to come this year as the 22-year-old stud vies for a perception of his star mighty to reflect the reality of it.
Niemann has been a professional golfer for nearly three days now after he turned pro as a 19-year-old. He went on to earn special temporary membership on the PGA Tour in his fifth originate after the 2018 Masters and his full card three starts later.
Again, he was six months from turning 20 at the time he earned his card, or two days younger than Matthew Wolff is right now. From there he won at the end of 2019, played on the 2019 International Presidents Cup team and fallacious some terrific form at the very end of 2020, which he clearly contained into 2021.
It's this meteoric rise at such a tender age that is part of the jam when it comes to perception with Niemann. Though he is younger than bigger names like Viktor Hovland, Collin Morikawa and Sungjae Im (and barely older than Wolff), he's already played 73 PGA Tour suits, nearly twice as many as Morikawa.
However, age matters. When Morikawa was 20, he was refining his game anti lesser competition as he prepared for the professional ranks. When Niemann was 20, he was grinding out T30s anti grown men just trying to get to the next week. Morikawa won a the majority at 23. Niemann won't turn 23 for spanking 11 months. There is plenty of growing aloof to do.
On paper, the Tournament of Champions playoff loss was the best performance of Niemann's career, one better than his win at the Greenbrier in 2019. It got him enough OWGR points to move to No. 31 in the humankind and set the table for what could be a coming-out party for him.
Golf is, as winner Harris English said on Sunday, a game that comes and goes. There are ups and downs, and nobody is excuse from that. Niemann's career has gone in waves. He was playing at a top-25 clip back at the end of 2019 and has once anti reached that level, according to Data Golf. What's more humdrum, though, is that if you look at the graphic below, Niemann's most recent trough -- above the middle of 2020 -- was much higher than his survive (in the middle of 2019). That suggests that his consume is getting higher, and maybe the ceiling will be higher this time throughout as well.
Niemann is an absolute joy to watch. He speaks little -- both on and off the flows -- and lets his astonishing ball escapes do most of the talking. There's work to be done with the sulky game, but from October 2019 to now, he's been better from tee to green than golfers like Tommy Fleetwood, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka, and yes, Matthew Wolff.
The career projections for Niemann are fascinating. Names like Jason Day, Adam Scott and Jon Rahm pop up. So too do names like Seung-Yul Noh, Robert Gamez and Bud Cauley.
So which of these paths will Niemann take? Time will tell, and this year will tell a lot. Has the PGA Tour revealed who he is throughout 73 starts, or does he have a ton of room to grow because he devoted so much time on the PGA Tour as a teenager? To ask it unexperienced way, would Niemann have been winning everything he explored at as a 20-year-old if he went to Florida or Arizona State?
The numbers would suggest that Niemann has actually been better than Morikawa during his 19-, 20- and 21-year-old days, even when you account for the difference in competition (pros vs. college). That portends some glorious special 22-, 23- and 24-year-old years from Niemann. But numbers are just numbers. Morikawa has multiple wins and a major. That's the next step for Niemann, one that could take achieve over the next 12 or 24 months.
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