Comfortable With His Choices, AJ Ott is in Control of His Golf and His Life

After making the decision to return to school, AJ Ott is starring this season for Colorado State University.

By Anthony Cotton

There are those who will listen to AJ Ott talk about his golf game, about how what he shoots on any given day ultimately doesn’t matter because he’s playing for a greater good, and they’ll wonder how someone with that attitude could possibly be able to A) Make it to big-time, professional golf, let alone B) compete with the scores of incredibly talented collegiate players across the country.

Simply put, the answers are A) Playing pro golf isn’t what’s motivating Ott, a senior at Colorado State University, or even uppermost on his mind.

As for B), one only has to look at last week’s Division I player rankings, courtesy of Golfstat, the company used by the NCAA to administer ratings. Their formula, incorporating scores along with competition, showed AJ Ott as the top player in the country:

 

Player                             Team                                        Average

 

AJ Ott                             Colorado State                           68.98

Jacob Bridgeman          Clemson                                     68.37

Michael Brennan            Wake Forest                            69.24

Michael Feagles             Illinois                                       69.19

John Pak                         Florida State                            70.21

That’s right, Ott, the unassuming, God-fearing golfer from a cold weather state, who earlier this week had to make do with hitting shots from a garage bay because of the deluge of snow that precluded any chance of practicing outside, was considered the best collegiate player in the nation (idle for the last week, Ott has since fallen to 27th nationally in the latest set of rankings released on Tuesday). His lofty position was largely borne of victories in the first two tournaments CSU played this Spring, Ott becoming just the seventh Ram to win multiple events in the same season. Even after finishing in a tie for 17th last week in an event in California, Ott was still named one of three finalists for the Ben Hogan Award February Golfer of the Month. It also puts him on the radar for the honor given in the name of the golf icon, awarded at the end of the season to the top men’s college golfer.

This coming after Ott made the decision to return to CSU for another year; after the novel coronavirus shut down most of the 2020 season, players were given another year of eligibility if they wanted. For Ott, that meant a choice between college and perhaps turning pro.

In reality, he says, it wasn’t much of a choice at all.

“Pro golf is something I hope for, but last year, I just didn’t think my game was ready,” Ott said. “I really wanted to spend another year with my teammates, and just being in Fort Collins for another year, and playing college golf for another year just sounded great…I think that’s what my game needed—to compete more and see where my game was at compared to some of the better college players.”

Of course, the counter argument to Ott’s line of thinking is that there would have been plenty of opportunities work on his game on a daily basis and to compete, likely with even more accomplished golfers, had he turned pro—and there wouldn’t have been the pesky trudging through the snow to get to a slate of classes each week either. But at the time when Ott was weighing his options, he argues that a lot of the mini tours he might have been playing on were shut down as well because of the pandemic. That would have left him scrambling, or, in his words, “hum dinging it”  to find somewhere to play, as opposed to not turning pro and competing in events like the USGA’s U.S. Amateur, which Ott qualified for last August, at Bandon Dunes.

“We were guaranteed to play amateur events in the summer and college events in the spring,” he said. “And I feel like the competition in college is just so good—maybe not as good as the professional level obviously—but I just felt like this way, I was going to get more rounds in.”

Besides, there were still opportunities to tee it up with the big boys; before leaving for Oregon, Ott more than acquitted himself well in the CoBank Colorado Open, finishing tied for 36th overall in the 156-player field, ahead of such tournament headliners like Chris DiMarco and Jonathan Kaye. He also missed out on being the low amateur in the field by just two shots.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Ott says he doesn’t recall any particular brush with greatness from the tournament, but he does remember thinking that it was “really cool” to hear their perspectives on playing at the next level.

“They play so much golf; they said you have to really love tournament golf to make it,” Ott said. “You’re traveling and playing so much, more than college even, so you have to really love the competition.”

At the start of his CSU career, Ott said he found himself grinding obsessively over every round he played, over every shot he took, in a quest to become something special. At the end of his freshman season, his coach, Christian Newton, told Ott he was on the right path and to trust the process.

“We told him he needed to keep doing what he was doing,” Newton said. “He didn’t like that very much.”

Fast forward four years and Ott says he now understands what his coach was trying to get across.

“I knew I had good golf in me; I think I was just getting a little impatient—maybe I was a little immature more than anything,” he said. “I just held golf and my results way too high…I just had to give myself a little more grace…I tend to be a perfectionist in a lot of things and I used to beat myself up a lot. Now I know I need to take a step back—golf should be fun and not trying so hard actually helps a lot.”

Much more important, he says, is how he represents himself, how he interacts with teammates and other people he comes across—”At the end of the day, any results, or whatever I shoot really doesn’t matter.”

But that’s not to say that AJ Ott doesn’t care whether or not he plays good golf, or that he’ll walk away from the chance to get up close and personal with professional golfers on a more regular basis, should the opportunity arise in the near future.

And at that point, he says, he’ll let his game address any of the naysayers out there.

“I feel at the professional level there may be guys who are more serious about their games, but, I mean, honestly, I think everyone has their own formula…I grew up playing a lot of sports and I’m competitive with a lot of things—I think playing tournament golf would be a lot of fun.”

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