Surrey’s Adam Svensson, a former B.C. junior golf standout who in 2014 was the NCAA Division II player of the year, has left college to turn pro.
“I’ve wanted to turn pro for many years and finally it’s coming,” Svensson said in a phone interview Thursday from Florida. “I’m pretty excited.”
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Svensson, 21, won a school record nine tournaments at Barry University before recently deciding to leave during his junior year at the Miami-area school.
Seven of those wins came in a brilliant sophomore season in which he led Barry to its second straight NCAA Division II team championship and was named winner of the Jack Nicklaus Award as the top player in Division II.
“I just felt my game is there,” Svensson said. “I helped the school to two national championships. I just felt like it was my time. Mentally, I was ready and my coach kind of knew I was ready, too, so he was pretty understanding of it.”
Svensson said he’s known since his early teens that he was headed toward a pro golf career.
“When I got to be 14, 15, 16, I just felt like it was something I loved to do and I never really thought about playing any other sports. I took golf very seriously.”
Kris Jonasson, the longtime executive director of British Columbia Golf, watched Svensson grow up as a junior golfer in the province.
“I think all of us recognized at a very early age that he was just a natural talent at the game,” Jonasson said Thursday. “He’s fearless, he is not afraid to post a low number. He has got a killer competitive nature and that is something you can’t really teach.”
Svensson won the B.C. Amateur title in 2010, when he was just 16 years old. His other notable amateur titles include the Canadian Juvenile, Canadian Junior and Callaway World Junior titles.
Svensson has been a member of Golf Canada’s national team program for six years. Natonal men’s team coach Derek Ingram thinks Svensson is ready for the pro game.
“I think so highly of his game,” Ingram said. “He drives the ball world-class. If you put him on the PGA Tour he’d be top 10 in terms of accuracy and he’s longer than average. He’s just a fantastic ball-striker. The timing was right for Adam. He has really matured the last two or three years as a person and he has learned to live away from home and on the road. The package is a lot better now than it was at 18 or 19.”
Svensson is expected to sign with the SportBox Entertainment Group, which has a large stable of Canadian golf pros. An official announcement is expected next week.
Svensson has some tournaments lined up, including the PC Financial Open, a PGA Tour Canada event at Point Grey Golf & Country Club in late May.
He’ll undoubtedly get a spot in this summer’s Nova Scotia Open, a Web.com Tour event run by SportBox, and as a longtime member of Golf Canada’s national teams could be in line for an exemption into the RBC Canadian Open this summer at Glen Abbey Golf Club.
“I have a bunch of tournaments lined up and I will be playing in some PGA Tour qualifiers and stuff like that,” he said.
Svensson tried to play his way into this week’s PGA Tour event, the Valspar Championship near Tampa. He shot a 66 to finish second in last week’s pre-qualifier. He fired a 69 with six bogeys in the subsequent Monday qualifier, but missed by three shots.