Any Golf Dad Worth a Damn Knows if You Want Your Child Prodigy to Live Up to His Potential, You Have to Get Him on a Late Night Talk Show

Any golf dad worth their salt knows if you want your child golf prodigy to live up to his full potential, it's imperative you get him on late night television. At age 9, Rory McIlroy went on the Northern Ireland talk show 'Kelly'. At age 2, Tiger Woods went on the Mike Douglas show with Bob Hope and Jimmy Stewart.

A few years later, Tiger got himself a 5-minute segment on 'That's Incredible' with NFL Hall of Famer, Fran Tarkenton.

Ok so maybe it's only those two. But with Rory McIlroy winning The Masters yesterday, that means 33.33% of all golfers who have won a career Grand Slam made talk show appearances before the age of 10. That's a good track record for me. If my hypothetical future child so much as makes a par by age 6, I'm hiring an agent. We're putting out calls to Kimmell, Fallon, Colbert, Jason Kelce, Druski, and whoever the hell else is hosting late night talk shows approximately 10 years from now. My kid just needs a hook. Something beyond simply being above average at golf to make him interesting enough for TV. Rory McIlroy had chipping into the washing machine. Tiger Woods was black. I'm pretty sure all I would need to do is train our family dog to fetch my son's golf balls. If I can do that, that should be good enough for at least 3 minutes with The Rizzler on a slow news day. 

It's pretty incredible that both Tiger & Rory's fathers were able to call their shots as well as they did. Earl Woods made Tiger Woods a household name before he finished college. We've all heard the story of Rory's father winning $100,000 on a $200 bet that his son would win The Open by age 26. For even one of them to pan out is damn impressive in its own right. Because no matter how badly a child is beating up on his competition before the age of 10, you can't possibly know that he's going to be a generational talent. How often does the best tee-ball player in town even end up being the best baseball player at his local high school? Almost never. Kids grow (or don't grow), they develop new skills, many of them lose interest in the sport by the time they're grown. So much can go wrong from the time a child is dominating their sport in 2nd grade. For two father's to get their kids in the national spotlight at such a young age, and have them pan out to be arguably two of the top ten golfers in the history of the sport. That's a hell of a feat.

That being said, there are plenty of other child golf "prodigies" who got some publicity when they were young, but ultimately flamed out before reaching their alleged potential. Take Michelle Wie for example. Michelle Wie is a bit of a different case. For multiple reasons. But at the age of 13, she was supposed to be too good to even play on the women's circuit. Michelle Wie was going to be the first woman to make it on the men's tour. She even turned in some extremely promising performances in PGA Tour events before she was old enough to drive. At the Sony Open in 2004, at age 14, Michelle Wie shot a 2nd round 68. She missed the cut by only 1 stroke. 

But from that point on, she never quite lived up to expectations. She never did manage to make a cut in a PGA Tour event. She suffered a wrist injury in 2007. An injury that some say her swing never fully recovered from. She went on to have a more than respectable LPGA career. She won the U.S. Women's Open in 2014. But that turned out to be her only major victory. And in 2022, at age 32, Michelle Wie announced that she was stepping away from the game of golf. 

Then you have the story of Ty Tryon, which is a more traditional tale of a prodigy athlete who never lived up to the hype. 

TLDW: Ty Tryon dominated junior level golf, earning just about every accolade a junior golfer possibly could. He made national news by forgoing the traditional college route and turning pro at the age of 16. An especially controversial move for an American golfer in 2001. He qualified for the PGA Tour at age 17. He made millions of dollars in sponsorship deals. He was heralded as golf's next great champion. But things just never clicked on tour for him. His first season in 2002 was a disaster, as he was battling mono for a majority of the year. He spent the 2003 season on a medical exemption. After 2003, he didn't make another cut in a PGA Tour event until 2010, where he qualified for the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. He made the cut, but finished the weekend going 78, 80. He came in at +23 for the tournament. Tryon continued playing on multiple different lower level tours. Made multiple attempts to get back on tour. But he was never able to do so full time. In the golf world, he's essentially seen as the poster child for turning pro too young. 

The other prodigy golfer who immediately comes to mind is Ryo Ishikawa. I remember him bursting onto the scene as a teenager, looking cool as hell in his dark sunglasses and poofy visor hair. He's still only 33 years old, so he's technically still young enough to resurrect his career. He's still playing at a high level, and winning occasionally on the Japan Tour. But he never dominated at the PGA level the way his country had hoped. He's never come close to achieving what Hideki Matsuyama has.

Which of course begs the question, did Michelle Wie, Ty Tryon, and Ryo Ishikawa fail to live up to expectations because their parents didn't prepare them for the limelight by thrusting them onto late night television in grade school? Because their fathers didn't attempt to speak it into existence long before they proved anything? It does seem to the be the main common denominator between them. Even if Ryo's dad had so much as gotten him cast on a fucking insane Japanese game show, maybe things would have gone differently for him. 

Nowadays, aside from Tiger Woods' son Charlie, his potential future step-daughter Kai Trump, and John Daly's son John Daly II… the child golf prodigy I have my eye on is a kid named Tommy Morrissey. If that name doesn't ring a bell, you may know him as "kid who golfs with one-arm". You may even recognize him from this clip that went viral almost 10 years ago. 

Tommy Morrissey is 14-years old now. I'm not sure how realistic his chances of making it as pro golfer are. Is Tommy Morrissey really a golf prodigy? They sure do attach that word to his name a lot. But is the P-word being thrown around loosely because of the whole, "he only has one arm" thing?

I can't say for sure. But I can't help but suspect it might be the case. I'm also not even sure that golf is his #1 sport.

Hopefully I'm wrong, because I feel like we're overdue for the next great one-armed professional athlete. Jim Abbott retired from pitching 25 years ago. Shaquem Griffin played a few seasons of linebacker in the NFL with 3/4 of an arm. But he's been out of the league since 2020. From what I can tell, Tommy Morrissey is our next best hope. And if were basing his future success on the "Was he put in the national spotlight as a young child?" metric… I don't specifically see any evidence of Tommy on a late night talk show. But he does have a pretty nice clip of him golfing with Tour players as a 6-year old. And on top of that, he had a segment on CBS Mornings.

There's no shortage of young Tommy Morrissey content out there. So he's got that much going for him. If Tommy Morrissey can make it as a professional athlete with one arm, then this theory really might have some legs.