School Golf: The path to bring young Vietnamese talents to the world

Stanford University's Tiger Woods competes in the NCAA in 1995

In the global sports landscape, school golf is seen as a gateway to a professional future for young talents. In the US, a country with nearly 17,000 golf courses and more than 25 million players, golf is not only a sport but also a thriving educational and vocational industry.

Here, young athletes' journeys often begin with school golf programs, continuing with college scholarships, before reaching the PGA Tour or LPGA Tour.

At the heart of that system is the NCAA - the National Collegiate Athletic Association of the United States. NCAA Golf is considered the pinnacle "training ground", where legends such as Tiger Woods (Stanford University), Jack Nicklaus (Ohio State), or most recently Scottie Scheffler (Texas University) - the world's number 1 golfer today.

They all started on a path of academics combined with sports, where academic performance and competitive performance were evaluated in parallel.

Trang An Golf & Resort is the first destination of AJGA International Pathway in Vietnam

For young international golfers, the path to the NCAA used to be quite distant, due to cost barriers and limited access to American college coaches.

However, the launch of the International Pathway Series (IPS) system of the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) since 2018 has changed that. IPS opens up opportunities for talents outside the US to be recorded in the Rolex AJGA Ranking, thereby being monitored and selected by university coaches.

In Vietnam, from 2026, the IPS system will officially set foot with the opening tournament Trang An - AJGA International Pathway taking place at Trang An Golf & Country Club ( Ninh Binh ) from January 22-25, 2026.

This event marks an important turning point: for the first time, young Vietnamese golfers can be recruited directly onto the radar of NCAA and AJGA right at home without having to compete in the US.

According to statistics, NCAA currently has nearly 1,000 universities participating in the system, with the total value of golf scholarships each year estimated at 1.2 billion USD. With names like Nguyen Anh Minh, Doan Uy, Le Chuc An... gradually joining prestigious D1 schools in the US, Vietnamese school golf is opening a new door - the path of education, sports and career all in one.