U.S. Open: Golf's next American star? Jackson Koivun is ready to find out

AUBURN, Ala. — Don’t let the clear eyes and the calm, measured voice fool you. Jackson Koivun is an assassin with the highest of goals: “I want to be,” he declares, “the number-one player in the world.”

He says it in the middle of a long conversation, he says it without bravado or defiance, he says it with the same certainty that he’d say the sky is blue and the Auburn summers are hot. And he’s about to get the chance to carry through on it.

Later this week, Koivun, the star of Auburn’s national champion golf team, will make his final start as an amateur at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. Soon afterward, he’ll officially turn pro, making his first start as a professional in early July at the John Deere Classic. He’ll surrender his amateur, guaranteed slot at the Open Championship, which you only do if you’re highly confident you’ll play your way back into the field very soon.

“He’s the most positive, optimistic person I ever coached,” says Nick Clinard, Koivun’s head coach at Auburn. “Negative thoughts never really creep into his mind.”

The college-to-pro pipeline in golf isn’t quite as sanctified as, say, football or basketball, largely because college golf doesn’t have the same kind of cultural heft in American sports. So let’s put this in a cross-sport context: Koivun is the most anticipated amateur in a generation, on the level of LeBron James or fellow Auburn Tiger Cam Newton. Yes, he’s that good.

Koivun, who’s forgoing his senior year, is a two-time national champion and a three-time SEC champion, plus he’s led Auburn to two national titles. (Even Cam only got one.) He already ranks 28th in the world in true strokes gained, per DataGolf, among multiple recent major winners. During his three years in college, he won 11 times — six this past season alone — and finished with 34 top-10s and 87 rounds below par, all of which are school records. His career 68.89 scoring average is the best in NCAA history.

Shall we keep going? We’ll keep going. His freshman year, Koivun won all three major individual awards — the Ben Hogan, the Fred Haskins and Jack Nicklaus awards — along with the Phil Mickelson Outstanding Freshman Award. He’s a three-time SEC player of the year, and this past year, he again won all three individual honors, the first player ever to hit the trifecta twice.

Over the course of his college career, Koivun played well enough to guarantee himself a PGA Tour card after his sophomore season thanks to the PGA Tour’s University Accelerated program. That program awards points for a variety of achievements — winning a college tournament or award, making the cut in a PGA Tour event, participating on a national team — and Vanderbilt’s Gordon Sargent and Florida State’s Luke Clanton have already used it as a pathway to the PGA Tour. Still, he opted to remain at Auburn one more season, and the result was another handful of individual awards and another national championship. Time well spent.

“In between the ropes is his arena,” Clinard says. “He loves to compete with the game’s best in the world, and he’s proving he can do that.”

Born in California, Koivun began swinging a plastic club when he was two, and entering tournaments when he was five. A testament to the try-everything ethos of parenting young athletes, he played every sport in its proper season until eighth grade, when golf stuck.

“I like the solo aspect of it,” he told Yahoo Sports recently at Auburn’s palatial golf facility. “Obviously you can become very talented at it, but you can definitely beat someone with your mind, and you’re just relying on yourself. That’s something that drew me towards it.”

Once Koivun began entering, and winning, youth golf tournaments, he put himself on the radar of college programs. Clinard and Auburn knew they had to have him, and made the right pitch to get him in-house.

“He was always smaller as a kid, and he kept getting bigger and stronger and faster,” Clinard recalls. “The biggest thing we liked was just that he won so much. Learning how to win when you’re young is important.”

Koivun arrived on campus at Auburn ready to win, and ready to rally the Golf Tigers around him. “I remember Jackson texted me out of the blue one day, the day after I committed, and said ‘War Eagle, buddy, hope you’re ready to win a national championship,'” says now-former teammate Josiah Gilbert, the 10th-ranked amateur in the world. “That was the first words he ever said to me. So he set the tone really well.”

College golf athletes are much more busy than outside observers might believe. There are no off days; a day without a tournament is a day spent on the range. If it’s not as physically demanding as football or basketball, college golf still grinds its athletes down mentally. Add to that the need to take classes — most Auburn players do their work online — and you’re looking at a packed schedule just to stay afloat. It’s a challenge under the best of circumstances.

“They’re at a very impressionable age. They’re 18 to 22 years old,” Clinard says. “They’re trying to figure out who they are as human beings, they’re trying to figure out what is their identity, because their identity can’t be tied to golf.”

Nonetheless, Koivun threw himself into his team and his game. Gilbert recalled a moment late in his freshman year after the Tigers won the SEC and got back to Auburn around 10 p.m. at night. The next morning, Gilbert ran by the facility at 7:30 on what was supposed to be a quick errand … and there was Koivun, hammering away at the driving range.

“Big guy,” Gilbert said, “what are you doing?”

“We have regionals in a week and a half,” Koivun replied.

“I got to thinking, Yeah, we kind of do,” Gilbert later recalled. “And so I stayed and hit golf balls! He always does it, even when no one’s looking.”

“I feel like if I show a good ethic, and what to do leading up to a tournament,” Koivun says, “that maybe the guys will see that and maybe try to implement that into their own lives, and that’ll just make them better and the team stronger.”

While Koivun embraced the team element of college golf, he thrived in its individual aspect, as well. A match-play specialist — he went 13-4-1 in match play over his college career — Koivun relishes the mental warfare necessary to face an opponent straight up. “If I go play my best golf, I can beat you,” he says. “It’s very easy to wear someone down in match play. If you just keep hitting good shots and play how you know you can, you can either piss someone off, or make them frustrated, or make them start pressing a little more, which might cause them to make a mistake.”

That’s all the more impressive when you consider the level of talent at play in college golf’s elite levels. “If you tee it up against an SEC team, you know you’re teeing it up against some guys that you’ll see on the PGA Tour one day,” Gilbert says. “Instead of looking at it as something scary or something that is hard, it’s more of an opportunity to prove yourself every time you go out there. If you play really, really good and get beat, you probably got beat by a PGA Tour player someday.”

If Koivun has a weakness, it’s one of those classic too-much-of-a-good-thing ones — “He’s so hypercompetitive, and has an elite work ethic,” Clinard says. “Can he take time off? Can he learn to have a little more rest and recovery. That’s going to be a challenge for him, because he has a hard time turning it off sometimes. He just wants to compete all the time.”

In order to maintain his focus on competition and competition alone, Koivun eliminates as many variables as possible from his daily routine. He plays the same number on his golf balls — 1 — and he carries around a pure silver 1963 quarter that a fan gave him at the Arnold Palmer Invitational as a ball marker. It’s more routine than superstition, but the effect is the same.

And now Koivun gets to test himself on the biggest stage of all. He’s been here before; he made his majors debut last year at the U.S. Open. True to form, he absorbed the moment and then found his footing … almost. He missed the cut at a wicked Oakmont by a single stroke.

“The first tee shot at the U.S. Open was definitely a little nerve-wracking,” he says. “But after that, it was pretty much like another tournament. That’s just how I try to look at it. There’s obviously great players I’m competing against, but I know if I go play well, I can put my name in the hat for trying to win.”

The John Deere Classic has a bit of history in launching careers. Jordan Spieth captured his first professional win there at age 19 in 2013. Four years later, Bryson DeChambeau pulled off the same feat. And now comes Koivun, 21 years old, ready to level up his game. He’s put in the work, and now it’s time to start carrying through on those big dreams.

“Having goals is great, but it’s about what you’re doing leading up to that which will get you to those goals,” Koivun says. “Rather than just saying, Yeah, I want to be the number-one player in the world, how are you going to do that?”

“I think he has a chance to be one of the next great American players in this game,” Clinard says. “Look at his track record. It’s phenomenal, and a lot of it has to do with his work ethic.”

So what’s ahead for Koivun after the Deere? He has his PGA Tour card through the end of the 2027 season. He’s played on four different U.S. national teams, three of which won, which is leading some particularly optimistic golf pundits to suggest he could make this year’s Presidents Cup team or next year’s Ryder Cup team.

Too much? Consider this: Thanks to sponsor invites and awards, Koivun has already made nine starts on the PGA Tour as an amateur. He made six cuts in seven starts in 2025, including top-10 finishes at the ISCO Championship (T6), Wyndham Championship (T5) and the Procore Championship, where he finished T4 and just three strokes behind the winner, a gentleman by the name of Scottie Scheffler. He’s as ready as he can possibly be.

“Being in a new place every single week is going to be a little different for me and an adjustment I’m going to have to make,” he concedes. “I like to think about it as, a 7-iron in a college event is the same as a 7-iron at the Masters, so nothing should change that much unless the conditions are different.”

The moment has arrived, and Koivun is as ready for it as he can be. “If you just watch his mannerisms, he’s built for this,” Clinard says. “He wants more people watching him.”

“It’s very easy to get caught in the limelight of what you’re playing in, and everything like that,” Koivun says. “But at the end of the day, everyone’s human and we’re all just trying to do the same thing.”

Some better than others. Koivun tees off later this week for his final amateur appearance, and then the real work begins.