If you haven’t met him yet, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Jaden Soong. He’s a St. Francis High School freshman, a funny kid and, yeah, something of a golf phenom.
There’s a chance you’ve already met him. Perhaps as an adorable 6-year-old getting buzz from BuzzFeed, which posted a video in 2016 showing off Soong’s perfect miniature swing under the title: “This 6-Year-Old Could Be The Next Golf Phenom.”
Maybe you learned of him last year?
Do you remember the Burbank eighth-grader who became the youngest golfer to reach the final round of U.S. Open qualifying? The youngster who made it through the local qualifier Brentwood Country Club after going through a pre-round routine that included watching the short video Kobe Bryant recorded for him in 2018: “If you want to be great, if you want to feel what excellence feels like, you have to put in the work!”
Spent Monday watching 13-year-old @jadenrsoong Soong school the grownups at U.S. Open local qualifying (see below). He shot even to finish T4 – after getting hyped by watching this video Kobe Bryant made him in 2018. Watch and you’ll be hyped too. Thanks for sharing, Chris Soong! pic.twitter.com/96xNN0tuP2
— Mirjam Swanson (@MirjamSwanson) May 16, 2023
Or if you’re just reading about him now, it’s as he’s just finishing a summer rampage, win after win after win, so many that it started to feel like every time I logged into Instagram, I was seeing a post about another victory somewhere in the country.
Those successes ranged from impressive to gobsmacking, including the one early this month at the Curry Cup, the final stop on NBA star Stephen Curry’s national Underrated Tour.
Soong shot 2-under 217 at the venerable Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J, where he won a three-man playoff and got to shoot the breeze with Curry, the all-time shooter – which is to say, there was a rumor Curry shot a 66 on that uber-challenging course before the kids showed up.
Soong’s take: “If he shot 66, he should switch to golf. Like, genuinely, he shouldn’t be playing basketball. He might be the greatest 3-point shooter of all time, but he should retire and play golf.”
Seems only fair, then, to let Soong tell you about his own hoops prowess: “I’m not very good at layups,” he said, “but a contested 3-point shot? I can do a full-360-stepback-turnaround-Durant-type stuff and I will make that shot all day long.”
I can’t verify that, but I can tell you that in the past few months, he won on the SCPGA’s Toyota Tour Cup series and at an American Junior Golf Association stop – where he shot a nine-birdie final-round 63 at The Havens Country Club in Vista to rally from three strokes back.
That Soong advanced to the semifinals of the California Amateur, where he played one-on-one match play golf for the first time at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks.
That most notably, he became the youngest winner Southern California Golf Association Amateur Championship’s 125-year history, shooting an unconscious 10-under-par 278 over four days to make history at The Saticoy Club in Somis. That he carded a bogey-free six-under-par 66 on the final day to add his name to the trophy beside the likes of Tiger Woods and Patrick Cantlay, Charlie Wi, Beau Hossler and Sahith Theegala.
That the victory earned Soong entry into the U.S. Amateur in August at Minnesota’s Hazeltine National Golf Club (where he shot 8 over and missed the cut in his first bite at the prestigious event) and walked away with another experience that will go into his “golf DNA,” as dad Chris Soong calls it.
That Jaden shot 65-69 (8 under) to win the third stop of Curry’s Underrated Tour at Notre Dame’s Warren Course, before finally claiming the Curry Cup championship, winning in a playoff, a real show of grit after he’d given back the final-round lead.
“I didn’t really use to believe in myself,” Jaden said recently after returning home from a couple-hour practice, where he’d worked on putting and ball flight and more putting. “Now it’s like I feel like I’m kind of the guy to beat.”
Sure, he has incredible momentum at the moment – despite a sore shoulder from too many pushups, Jaden just teamed with fellow 14-year-old Myla Robinson to win the inaugural SCGA Mixed Team Championship last week (64-65) at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort in Palm Springs – but this is golf and eventually, “golf comes and smacks you in the face,” Chris knows.
So it’s one thing to stack wins, it’s another to stack all these golf lessons.
To figure out how to really read greens and what it’s like to play against golfers like the 6-foot-5 Noah Kent, who was bombing drives 350 yards (only about 50 yards longer than Jaden, who stands, well … “if I can lie, I’ll say 5-6; if a girl’s asking, I’m 5-8, and if you want me to be really real, I’m 5-2.”)
Most importantly, he thinks, is that he’s learning how to handle golf’s best shot on any given day, whether he’s sitting on a lead or getting smacked around.
“Before I’d feel the nerves kick in, and it’s hard to control them sometimes,” said Jaden, who’s been working with Collin Morikawa’s coach Rick Sessinghaus on his mental approach, using his FlowCode system.
“I’ve been able to do way better this year,” Jaden continued, “because, obviously, I’ve made it to some pretty big stages. Like when you’re coming down to the final stretch at the SCGA Amateur and you don’t want to lose it, or you’re on the first tee at the U.S. Amateur and all the nerves start kicking in.
“But I feel like I’ve been really able to figure out my mindset and just tell myself, ‘Hey, I’ve been putting in a lot of work.’ So this summer’s been great, and the confidence I have right now, it’s just how do you keep that and build off that?”
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So that’s got to be the best part, right? All the winning? The competing and coming out on top? The confidence that inspires?
Well, sure, Jaden said. And getting to travel; he and his mom, Sandra, had never been to New York City until the Curry Cup brought them there.
“But I think what I’ve realized this year, is that most important is the experiences and the people and the connections that you build playing golf,” said Jaden, who just met NBA all-timer Curry, of course. “It’s just really building those connections that I like the most.”
And so I’m glad I could introduce you to him, or reintroduce you – not for the last time, I’m sure.