The PGA Tour’s 2019 freshmen Collin Morikawa, Matthew Wolff and Viktor Hovland secured professional rankings soon after passing out of their college.

These rising stars of professional golf, etched some history this past week in their Official World Golf Ranking along with other young guns like Sungjae Im and Joaquin Niemann. In the history of the sport, five players age 23 or under are now placed inside the top 25 of the world rankings.

Collin Morikawa (23) leads the raking as he sits at World No. 4 behind veterans Dustin Johnson (36), Jon Rahm (26) and Justin Thomas (27).

Hovland who is also 23, is next at 14th while his former teammate 21-year-old Wolff is behind him in 15th. Im and Niemann rank in No. 18 and No. 25 and both the golfers’ age is 22.

Matthew Wolff, who is the reigning NCAA champion, won the 3M Open as he outperformed Morikawa and Bryson DeChambeau with an eagle on the last hole to join Tiger Woods and Ben Crenshaw as the lone players to win an NCAA title and PGA Tour in the same calendar. Truth be told, because of COVID-19 constraining the retraction of the 2020 season.

Morikawa won the 2019 Barracuda Championship just as 2020’s Workday Charity Open and PGA Championship. This puts the youngster next in ranking. While Hovland won the 2020 Puerto Rico and went on to break an age-old curse by winning December’s Mayakoba Golf Classic.

Im was 2019’s PGA Tour Rookie of the Year and the next season he went on to advance in 26 of his 35 starts with two where he led the Tour. Im acquired seven top-10 finishes and played 118 rounds, 18 more than the player that is behind him in the ranking. He won the Honda Classic in 2020 for his first Tour win.

Niemann from his earlier 45th rank bounced back by 20 spots since the finish of 2020. He began the 2021 campaign with successive runner-up finishes in Hawaii. In the wake of missing the cut in the previous season’s Northern Trust has finished

inside the top 25 out of eight of his last 10 starts. He is also the first-ever Chilean to actually win on Tour in 2019’s A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier.