C.T. Pan on his path to the PGA TOUR, and following the success of Tiger Woods

C.T. Pan might not have been a well-known name to casual golf fans before he won the RBC Heritage on Sunday, but he’s been building to this moment his entire life.

C.T. Pan, winner of the 2019 RBC Heritage, worked very hard to get to the PGA Tour. Now he’s a winner. But his journey started more than two decades ago, when his late father, an elementary school teacher at the time, created a makeshift golf course for him and his brother to learn the sport. He knew about golf because his mother was a caddie and his late father also had a job at the golf course.

“One day my dad told me and my brother — we all kind of learned golf together at the same time– he told us that he believed this sport has a really good potential in the future,” Pan explained in his post victory press conference.

He recalled watching the 1996 Masters and watching Tiger Woods win PGA Tour events.

“My dad would tell me, hey, I want you one day to do that for me. And dad, finally, we’ve done it,” he said.

With the idea of being like Tiger Woods in the back of his mind, Pan worked his way to the PGA Tour, step by step.  His second-place finish at the 2006 Asian Games was his ticket to the IMG Academy in Florida.

From there, he played in AJGA events from 2007 to 2010, and soon thereafter entered the University of Washington, where he won eight times as a member of their golf team. In 2013, he was the No. 1. In the World Amateur Golf Ranking for two months.

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In 2015, Pan made the cut at the U.S. Open held at Chambers Bay.  The next month, he won The Players Cup on the PGA Tour Canada circuit.  He went through qualifying for the Web.com Tour later that year and two years later earned his PGA Tour card.

His victory at the RBC Heritage is his first PGA Tour title.

Pan is goal driven, and his target since he became qualified for the PGA Tour is to make the Tour Championship.

“This W sets me up very well,” he said. “Being able to play the Tour Championship is always my goal every year. And last two years I got close, but I wasn’t able to play at East Lake. But hopefully at this year I’ll do something special, just like this win, to secure it.”

Since only 30 players advance to the Tour Championship, there is no guarantee that one victory will get him there.  However, it will get him to the FedEx Playoffs. He will need to play well there to get to the Tour Championship.

C.T. Pan said one reason he won is that he learned from mistakes he made last year at the Wyndham which he nearly won last summer. He hit a bad shot at the wrong time.

“It definitely change my perception on the last couple of holes down the stretch of what I should do,” he said, recalling the Wyndham experience. “The last three holes (at RBC Heritage) I would say, I played really well here, a lot of good shots just because I told myself I need to focus on the details, the little things, and just stay in present. And that really helps me a lot. And that’s something I didn’t do at Wyndham.”

On Sunday of the RBC Heritage, Pan went to the range very early to work on putting drills and ball-striking fundamentals.

“That really helped me today,” he admitted. “I just feel more comfortable on the tee shots and approach shots, and that really helped me down the stretch.”

C.T. Pan is the second golfer from Taipei to win a PGA Tour event. The other one was T.C. Chen, who won an event 22 years ago. Chen won the 1987 Los Angeles Open – better known today as the Genesis Open, hosted by Tiger Woods.