Eric Cole mirrors mother Laura Baugh’s legacy : Secures PGA Tour Rookie of the Year title 50 years after her LPGA achievement
Exactly 50 years later, Eric Cole has won the same award his mother did. In 1973, Laura Baugh won LPGA Rookie of the Year. In 2023, Cole has done the same on the PGA Tour. It's rare for parents to share this sort of award with their children, but the two have done so on their respective tours with an impressive time gap.
The timeline may be a bit confusing, but Cole isn't the stereotypical rookie. The 35-year-old is still considered a rookie in golf.
A PGA Tour player can sometimes have to wait for their debut for a long time. Not everyone is Tiger Woods, who debuted on Tour when he was 16-years-old. Others have made their debuts early, but glory came late for Cole.
It was an impressive but busy year for the golfer, who earned seven top-10 finishes in 2023. Cole said via the Tour website:
“You know, I mean, this is a tournament I've always played. I like to play tournaments. I like to compete. Most of the people playing in this are friends of mine or people I've played with in the past, so it's good to see them. It's almost like part of my DNA."
He continued:
“I just like it. And then I think it's cool to bring a little bit of light to the Minor League Tour, where I spent a lot of time and kind of learned to improve my game. And it also will probably show how good a lot of these guys out here are that people haven’t heard of.”
Cole first earned his PGA Tour card in 2022 and went on to have a stellar year. He was the only rookie to finish in the FedEx top 50, and he was given the award named after Arnold Palmer as a result.
Ironically enough, Palmer's grandson Sam Saunders used to employ Cole as a caddie. He always said that his caddie was better than he was, and now Cole has an award to back that statement up.
Eric Cole inspires with epic Rookie of the Year turn
It was a fantastic year for Eric Cole, who has been able to inspire tons around him during his run. It's not often that older golfers get a breakthrough like this, and Cole's journey only proves that others could, too.
Justin Peters, a 46-year-old trying to make it on tour, stated that he was inspired by Eric Cole's win. He said:
“I wasn’t playing this year because I didn’t make it through second stage last year. I took eight months off and was trying to decide – am I going to take a pause on golf because I’m getting older? Do I wait and do a Champions Tour run? But watching Eric have an amazing year inspired me because look what he’s doing.”
Several others mentioned that they were invigorated by watching the eventual rookie winner play and that it had propelled them to keep working at the dream of making it to top tier of the sport.