Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.
Jackson Koivun is just the latest in a long line of college phenoms to reach for the PGA Tour’s brass ring. And this past Sunday, he caught it with a victory at the 3M Open.
Will he become a bona fide star? No one knows yet, but he’s crossed the first hurdle, which is winning.
The PGA Tour’s star machine starts with a victory or two. And one of the things that makes professional golf exciting is you never really know when someone new is going to catch fire and reach past the victory circle to stardom.
Yes, Jackson Koivun won. But stardom is more than that. Stardom is a presence. Stardom is the “it” factor. And stardom is heavy. Who can stand the weight of it? Who can carry the gravity of winning? Only a few have the strength to carry it.
For instance, before he was Scottie Scheffler, world No. 1, he was “Who’s he?”
Now, 20 PGA Tour victories later, four of which are majors, Scheffler is so well known that he can’t tell anybody which Chipotle locations he frequents. He made the mistake of mentioning one of them, and now he can’t go there because people are hanging out, waiting for him to show up so they can make a fuss or ask for autographs and cell phone pictures.
When that happens, he can’t get food, and the restaurant can’t operate.
That’s the star machine in action. That’s part of the strain. You have to be willing to give up some of your freedoms to be in that rarified atmosphere.
These days, Scheffler also has to think before he speaks because his words carry more weight now than they did five years ago when it first looked like he was going to be something, way back in 2019 and 2020.
At last year’s British Open, before he won that event, he talked about the fleeting nature of excitement that comes with winning.
“It's great to win tournaments. It's a lot of fun. Sometimes the feeling only lasts about two minutes, it seems like, when you're celebrating, and then it's like, okay, now you've got to go do all this other stuff, which is great, but sometimes the feeling of winning only lasts a few seconds. It's pretty exciting and fun, but it just doesn't last that long,” he said.
There are the champion photos, dignitary photos, photos with the greens staff and the golf shop professionals, maybe a dinner and more photos, and then he packs up and goes to the next tournament. And then there are more questions.
“I win this golf tournament, and then I'm going to show up in Memphis, and it's like, okay, listen, you won two majors this year; what are you going to do this week? That's the question you're going to get asked,” he explained referring to his 2025 results.
That’s one of the hard parts of the star machine. It’s the hamster wheel of what have you done for us lately? New shoes? New shirt? New glove? New putter? New grip? New workout? What have those done for you and what will they do to help you win again? Because we like to see you win. It’s exciting for us. We wish we could do it.
As Scheffler pointed out, winning is “fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it's not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart.”
Most people don’t say that, even if they think it. As Scheffler said at the 3M Open, it’s finding the why for doing what he is doing. One why is he hates losing, but it’s not the only thing.
“Like I said last year, what's the point because we just continue to want more and more,” Scheffler admitted. “The heart's never satisfied, and we're always looking for more. But that's also kind of the fun part: The chase:”
For Scheffler, competition is his why. He likes to test his skills against the rest. He loves playing golf. Loves getting better at the game. He has a love-hate relationship with the butterflies before he plays.
“I love those feelings, and when I retire, I'm going to miss them,” he admitted.
While Scheffler isn’t headed for retirement any time soon, he is 30. He needs to keep the pedal down if he wants to visit the butterfly enclosure often. The reason is that there are plenty of guys like Jackson Koivun who want to win and win again. Their softspikes are in stealth mode coming down the fairway after him.
So, the bottom line, does Jackson Koivun want to be one of the stars of the future on the PGA Tour? If he continues to play the way he did at the 3M Open, 64-68-61-66, and if he manages his interviews well, there’s nothing to hold him back. Nothing but the weight of stardom.
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