This article originally appeared in the October issue of NCGA Golf Magazine
San Jose product, No. 1-ranked amateur enjoyed extended homecoming at U.S. Amateur, Walker Cup and Procore Championship
By Cameron Morfit
The shadows were growing longer on a Friday afternoon in September as San Jose product Jackson Koivun did his final preparations for the 50th Walker Cup at Cypress Point. All looked good, but it wasn’t quite perfect, so he texted his coach, Cinnabar Hills Golf Club assistant pro Fred Garcia.
Could Garcia, a former mini-tour player who has coached Koivun since he was 13, abandon plans to play nine holes himself and return to Cypress?
“I caught a ride back to the course and caught him on 12,” Garcia said. “It was 3 o’clock, there was nobody out there, and it was just magical. It was just me; (Auburn University assistant men’s golf coach) Chris Williams and his wife; Jackson; and his caddie from Cypress. He had to be ready for the flag ceremony at 5, but Jackson just always wants to practice and play.
“I’d take a couple videos, and he’d look at them and say, ‘Oh, that was really good,’” Garcia continued. “And when he says it’s really good, it’s really good. His swing looked so good, and we’d made an adjustment with his putting a couple days earlier. He just wanted me to look at everything.”
Playing every session, Koivun went 3-1 as the U.S. beat Team GB&I 17-9. A week later, he wrapped up his Summer of NorCal at the PGA Tour’s Procore Championship at Silverado Resort in Napa, where he ran out of gas (sort of) with a final-round 71 to finish T-4.
After a disappointing U.S. Amateur at San Francisco’s Olympic Club (second-round exit) and his starring turn at the Walker Cup at Cypress, the pro effort at the Procore only added to a stellar extended homecoming for the former Junior Tour of Northern California (JTNC) star.
“It was good to get back to that area,” said Koivun, an only child whose parents, George and Meghan, moved the family from San Jose to Chapel Hill, N.C., before his senior year of high school. “Obviously I had some familiarity with it and felt comfortable being on home turf.
“I’d have liked to have played better at the U.S. Amateur,” he added, when asked if he had regrets. “It’s the biggest amateur tournament in the world and I’d gotten to the Round of 8 a few years ago before losing to Nick Dunlap in extra holes. I just didn’t play great and didn’t make a lot of putts.”
That’s rare. The Procore marked Auburn junior Koivun’s third straight top-10 finish on the PGA Tour (T-5 Wyndham Championship, T-6 ISCO Championship), and he already has hit the 20-point threshold to earn his PGA Tour card through PGA Tour University Accelerated. He deferred accepting it to stay in school and try to lead Auburn to its second national title in three years. And, yes, to play in a Walker Cup at Cypress.
“At the end of the day it’s my childhood dream to play on the PGA Tour,” he said. “Whether that’s after this (school) year or next year, we’ll see.”
Becoming Jackson
The most intriguing prospect to come out of Northern California in years, who won every major college golf award as a freshman and whom Auburn admirers have taken to calling King Koivun, defies easy explanation. For one thing, dad George Koivun dabbled in football but isn’t much of a golfer. Mom Meghan did some swimming, was no Olympian, and isn’t a golfer.
“I don’t know where it comes from with Jack,” Meghan said. “We lived on a street in San Jose where he could go out the door and disappear playing sports with friends. T-ball was too boring for him, waiting around to hit. Soccer was pretty good; that tuckered him out.
“He was the quarterback on his flag-football team for eight years,” she continued. “They formed this team in kindergarten and had uniforms and called plays and everything. He’s still close with some of his teammates.”
What clicked more than anything was golf. Koivun began playing at the nine-hole executive Santa Teresa Golf Club, which Meghan called, “as public a course as can be.” It also was perfect; Santa Teresa’s mission statement is to “create the finest, the most exciting and enjoyable learning environment for all golfers of all ages and abilities.”
“He had friends there,” Meghan said. “He loved it.”
When it came time to graduate to an 18-hole course, Koivun moved up to Cinnabar Hills Golf Club. Initially he took lessons from one of Garcia’s colleagues, but when that coach left town, Meghan asked Garcia if he might take over teaching her son. It wasn’t a tough decision.
“I played some golf back in the day with Corey Pavin, and Jackson’s short game with the touch and the hands is comparable,” Garcia said. “He’s fearless. He believes he can hit any shot and win any tournament.”
For a while, Koivun was a well-kept secret. He played JTNC but not much on the bigger American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) stage. “There’s not much of that in California,” Meghan said. “We went to Arizona a few times, but that was about it.”
He won the 2021 Northern California Junior Championship, but for the most part Koivun was limited by the Covid pandemic, sequestered in his room like everyone else for about a year and a half of his first three years at Mitty High School in San Jose. Often, he would drive to Sacramento, where more was open than it was back home, to play golf with friends.
The family moved to Chapel Hill, N.C., for Koivun’s senior year, part of a plan that came down to golf. By switching to an online curriculum for his last year, Koivun would be freed up to go to more big tournaments, and by doing that he would get in front of more SEC coaches.
Auburn coach Nick Clinard landed a player in Koivun who was also recruited by pretty much every other big school you can think of in the Southeast and elsewhere. And Koivun took no time at all to adjust to the college game. He won the SEC Championship by six shots, was the first in Auburn history with a sub-70 scoring average (69.48) and became the first player to win all four major college awards in the same season: Jack Nicklaus, Fred Haskins, Ben Hogan, and Phil Mickelson.
Oh, and Auburn won the NCAA Championship.
How has Koivun done it? In large part, through a fierce dedication. Clinard has spoken of the team returning from a tournament and players piling into cars to go home from the team’s practice facility only to realize that Koivun has made his way to a hitting bay to beat balls. Meghan talks about her son’s thickly callused hands as being “almost deformed.”
The source of that drive is, again, a bit of a mystery.
“Even in the second grade Jack was very competitive,” Meghan said. “His teacher said he and his friend had gone through addition and subtraction, so she put them on division and multiplication because she didn’t know what else to do. It was the same with spelling and everything else.”
That fierce competitiveness puts Koivun in the same league as world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who won the Procore, but Koivun is such a fast player, Garcia likens him to former Stanford golfer Tom Watson.
“Sometimes he’s so fast the cameras miss him,” Garcia said.
These days, Koivun pals around with five-time PGA Tour winner Russell Henley, who lives in Columbus, Ga., about 30 miles from Auburn. Mom Meghan said he and Henley connect because both are quiet and down to earth but also radiate a quiet strength. “Russell has been like a big brother to Jackson, which has meant a lot to us,” she said.
The two play together often and even got in a practice round at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. Koivun finished T48. Henley won.
“That showed me what it takes,” Koivun said. “We play a lot. I’ll go to him or he’ll come to Auburn; it’s a one-hour time change so he gains 15 minutes.”
You suspect that whether it’s next summer or the summer after that, King Koivun, already being mentioned as a potential member of the 2027 U.S. Ryder Cup team, will be hoisting a PGA Tour trophy himself in no time flat.