Sky's the limit for Michael Thorbjornsen, the new PGA TOUR U No. 1

Sandra Thorbjornsen missed a tee time when she went into labor with her fourth child, Michael Andreas, but she was at the golf course the next day with her newborn son.

You could say Michael Thorbjornsen was born for this.

Twenty-one years later, he has established himself as arguably the top prospect in the game. Using a powerful swing developed under the tutelage of his father, Thorbjorn Thorbjornsen, Michael is a player built in the modern mold whose career has been defined by success on historic courses. And now, he could be months away from a PGA TOUR card.

Michael is No. 1 in PGA TOUR University’s first ranking for the Class of 2024, which was unveiled Wednesday. Should he maintain that position through next year’s NCAA Championship, he will earn immediate TOUR status.

Mom Sandra played college golf at Ursuline College in Ohio while dad – who goes by Ted – has been Michael’s lifelong swing coach.

A victory in the 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur at Baltusrol Golf Club – where Thorbjornsen beat Akshay Bhatia, then the nation’s No. 1 junior and now a PGA TOUR winner – established him as an elite player. A year later at Pebble Beach, he became the second-youngest player since World War II to make the cut in the U.S. Open at 17 years, 8 months, 29 days old.

The Wellesley, Massachusetts, native surged into the top 30 of the World Amateur Golf Rankings as a high school junior, a rare feat for a prep player. Thoughts of taking the professional plunge early swirled in his mind before he even graduated, with plans of bowing out early in his sophomore or junior year of college. But with the creation of PGA TOUR U and the opportunity to earn PGA TOUR status immediately after the NCAA Championship, the optimal path for his professional career became clear.

“It feels like people are starting to recognize that the younger generation, the guys in college, we're just we're getting better and better,” he says. “It just came at a perfect time. I'm really lucky to be in this position.”

Lucky? Let’s say his success is well timed, because Thorbjornsen has proven himself worthy of the position. PGA TOUR U standings are based on World Amateur Golf Ranking points earned in collegiate and professional events during the last two years of a player’s collegiate career.

Thorbjornsen has contended at professional events and won some of college golf’s biggest titles during that span. His fourth-place finish at last year’s Travelers Championship was the best finish by an amateur on the PGA TOUR since 2015. This year, he has top-20 finishes at the DP World Tour’s Dubai Desert Classic, where he held the 36-hole lead before finishing T20, and the John Deere Classic (T17). A second-round 64 in Dubai and 63 at the John Deere belies his firepower. He pulled within one shot of the leaders in the final round of last year’s Travelers and said he felt “pretty comfortable out there, maybe too comfortable.”

“He enjoys big moments,” said Stanford men’s golf coach Conrad Ray. “Tough shots or stressful situations don’t seem to affect him as much as other players.”

Thorbjornsen also won the Olympia Fields Fighting Illini Collegiate last season, beating one of the year’s strongest fields at a former U.S. Open venue, and won the Pac-12 Conference Championship at the George C. Thomas-designed Stanford University Golf Course.

Christo Lamprecht, the low amateur at last week’s Open Championship, is No. 2 in the newly unveiled PGA TOUR U standings. In addition to making the cut at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, where he shared the lead after the first round, Lamprecht was a first-team All-American at Georgia Tech in 2023 and won The Amateur Championship in June. He has a Masters invitation awaiting him in April.

Last year, Texas Tech’s Ludvig Aberg became the first player to receive a TOUR card for finishing atop PGA TOUR U’s ranking. Aberg has quickly proven he was worthy of the honor, posting top-25 finishes in three of his first five pro starts, including a T4 at the John Deere.

Like Aberg, Thorbjornsen separates himself from his competition with the driver. Thorbjornsen ranked in the top seven in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Driving Distance at both this year’s John Deere and the 2022 Travelers. He averaged 328 yards per tee shot at TPC Deere Run and 310 at TPC River Highlands.

Ray, a collegiate teammate of Tiger Woods, called Thorbjornsen “a world-class ball striker. One of the best I have ever seen.”

“When he is driving the ball well, he is very tough to beat,” Ray added.

Improved course management and play around the greens have provided the consistency that is part of the maturation process for any player preparing for the pro game.

Thorbjornsen learned how to be away from home during his time in high school at the Florida-based IMG Academy, but the transition to Stanford was not easy. Despite a proven record in the classroom and on the golf course, juggling greater academic demands and tougher competition was a huge adjustment, especially in the midst of a pandemic.

One of the best recruits in the Class of 2020 didn’t have a single top 10 in his first season and finished with a scoring average of 72.1. With his game and the world in imbalance, he was left hungrier than ever.

He was still learning who he was. His true potential had yet to be unlocked, and the summer amateur schedule was the perfect proving ground.

The first order of business was returning home for the Massachusetts Amateur, where he defeated former U.S. Mid-Am champ Matt Parziale, 8 and 6, in the final. Thorbjornsen made birdie on 12 of the first 16 holes. Two weeks later, he shot a course record 62 to medal in the Western Amateur’s 72-hole stroke play portion. He won the tournament with a 4-and-3 win over Gordon Sargent in the final match.

“That was a really good confidence boost,” Thorbjornsen said. Calling his play at the Western Am “unbelievable,” it was the one win that reassured the commitment he’d made to a career in golf.

He saw improvement when he returned to Stanford – posting a handful of top-fives and lowering his scoring average by more than a stroke – but he still felt there was progress to be made.

The solution went beyond his performance on the course. He sought to obtain more balance – taking better care of his body, staying on top of his classes and even putting away the golf clubs.

“We dedicate so much time to golf and school, that sometimes we forget we’re just kids,” he says.

It helps to have childhood best friend Drew Cohen on his bag, with whom he shares plenty of good memories on and off the course. Cohen has already committed to being Thorbjornsen’s caddie for the foreseeable future.

But the rising star only broadened his introduction to the golf world with a home game at the 2022 U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. Though he missed the cut, it was the start of better things to come. A week later and a two-hour drive away, he shocked the golf world by finishing fourth at the Travelers with scores of 68-65-66-66.

The occasionally erratic nature of Thorbjornsen’s game is a welcome ebb: “I might shoot some worse scores at times, but I’m a more developed golfer,” he says, comparing his progress to that of his red-hot amateur summer in 2021.

The roars as he walked up the 18th green at TPC River Highlands on one late June afternoon only confirmed that.

“It was surreal,” he said. A smile spread all the way across his face as he added, “It’s better than how I dreamt about it.”

A big top-10 finish at the familiar Western Amateur and medalist honors at the 2022 U.S. Amateur capped off another summer of a lifetime. All the success earned him a spot on the three-man team that represented the United States in last year’s World Amateur Team Championship. He was one of the first three players named to the U.S. team that will play the Walker Cup at St. Andrews in September, as well.

When he returned to Stanford last fall, there was very little you could tell him about his golf game. In the cross-country fall opener at the Olympia Fields Fighting Illini Invitational, he edged out Illinois’ Adrien Dumont de Chassart to claim his long-awaited first collegiate win. (Dumont de Chassart has gone on to his own pro success, parlaying his PGA TOUR U status into five straight top-10s on the Korn Ferry Tour this summer, including a victory.)

Sure, patience helped, but a more mature and wiser Thorbjornsen became the fourth Cardinal in program history to hoist the trophy at Olympia Fields – joining elite company in Patrick Rodgers, Cameron Wilson and Maverick McNealy.

And the one person who led them all there knows the exact key to that shared success.

“I would say that the best players become real scientists of the game,” says Ray. “They want to know more.”

It took seeing how the nuances contributed to the bigger picture.

“Even though you might not be able to execute sometimes, you know your tendencies, your misses, you've been in situations enough times to know kind of what the outcome is gonna be like,” Thorbjornsen says.

That deeper understanding of himself led to Thorbjornsen’s best year of college golf, highlighted by eight top-10s, including two wins. As far as the second win? Thorbjornsen had already done enough waiting for the first one. The second came later that season when Stanford played host to the Pac-12 Championship.

Thorbjornsen’s public image in front of the camera shows a polished young player, one already accustomed to the interviews and demands that come with success. But there’s an understated fire waiting to strike – mostly spotted when his driver cracks a golf ball or when he ponders what life will be like as a professional golfer.

“I want people to be mad at how good I am,” he says. “I still have a long way to go, but that's what I want people to see when they see my name on a leaderboard.”

See the full PGA TOUR University Pre-Season Rankings here.