'Precocious and ferocious:' Aldrich Potgieter redefines the term long driver on PGA Tour
The 20-year-old rookie South African is on the verge of setting a new single-season record with an average driving distance of 327.6 yards, more than four yards better than Rory McIlroy, who is the next longest. When told during his press conference ahead of this week's FedEx St. Jude Championship that he had slipped to No. 2 in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, he said, 'if we can get back to No. 1, I think that would be nice.'
Potgieter's game still is very raw but he powered his way to a playoff victory at the Rocket Classic in Detroit last month and became the only rookie winner on Tour to qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs. He enters the week at No. 43 in the season-long standings and inside the top 50, the magic number who advance to next week's BMW Championship. At 20 years, 9 months, 16 days, he became the seventh-youngest PGA Tour winner since the start of 1983 – just 10 days older than Tiger Woods when he earned his debut victory – and the youngest player from South Africa to win on the PGA Tour.
To borrow a line from singer-songwriter Kim Carnes, he's precocious and ferocious. At age 17, he won the 2022 British Amateur Championship, becoming the second youngest winner in the history of the championship. He lapped the field at the 2023 Junior Invitational at Sage Valley, a prestigious junior tournament that attracts an international field, by 10 strokes and turned professional in 2023, wasting little time in becoming the youngest winner in Korn Ferry Tour history by winning the 2024 Bahamas Great Abaco Classic at age 19. Earlier this season, in February, he showed great promise at the Mexico Open before losing in a playoff. He proceeded to miss the cut at seven of his next eight starts before a trip back to South Africa allowed him to recharge his batteries and reset.
Potgieter has a stocky build and grew up playing rugby and wrestling, which may be a big reason for his natural ability to cruise at a ball speed of 192 to 194 with his driver. [The Tour average is 174 and Potgieter ranks first at 190.49.]
'The speed this kid has,' said his swing coach Justin Parsons. 'When he's doing that, he doesn't even look like he's going that hard at it. He does it with ease.'
Speaking on the 'Son of a Butch' podcast with Claude Harmon III, Parsons compared Potgieter to Dustin Johnson, the former world No. 1 and two-time major winner.
'It's a similar type of pattern to the way that they kind of see the game and the way that they play the game,' Parsons said. 'If guys like that drive it really straight under pressure and we do our job helping to educate and train them with the finer details of distance spin control, and they can do the rest of the stuff because they're really good golfers, then they become kind of hard to live with.'
Harmon III, son of famed instructor Butch Harmon, noted that while speed is a blessing there is a rate of diminishing return – the faster a golfer swings the club, the farther a player hits it but also the propensity for a ball to stray fuather offline. Distance gapping issues in his irons is one of the challenges that Potgieter must face along with controlling his flight of the ball to become a more complete player.
Can Potgieter learn to harness his superpower? Parsons pointed out that distance control is a skill that can be developed. Johnson, for instance, enjoyed his peak years once he learned to dial in his wedges and fully take advantage of his length off the tee.
'He's a race car driver and you're trying to get them to control the car and get the car around the track without crashing it,' Harmon said, but at the same time he advised Potgieter to stay aggressive. 'Don't take the hand brake off, be Max Verstappen.'
Potgieter conceded that he knew there would be a learning curve graduating to the PGA Tour but he has exceeded his own high expectations.
'You're playing with Scottie Scheffler and Ludvig Aberg, who's also fresh on the Tour and came out booming straight away, and Scottie has been out here and we can see how good he's playing as well. It's tough to compare your game to those guys, and I thought just giving it a year, you kind of get that feel a little bit,' he said. 'It's nice to see good results come from the first year on the Tour. You always come in not knowing exactly how things will play out, so it's nice to see some good results through the year.'
It's easy to forget that Potgieter is just 20 and doing things that only the likes of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and a select few have ever done at such a young age. He's still learning the finer points of the game and his big weakness may be one that all prodigies face. 'They don't know what they don't know,' Harmon III said.
Parsons's stable of pros includes major winners Louis Oosthuizen and Brian Harman and he's coached Harris English to top 10 in the world but in Potgieter, he recognizes he has a special talent that. 'You just tell yourself, 'Don't mess this up,'' Parsons said, 'because he's got a long runway in front of him.'
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