LA QUINTA, Calif. — Longtime Stanford men’s golf coach Conrad Ray called Cardinal senior Michael Thorbjornsen the physically most talented player Ray has ever coached. That’s high praise from Ray given his tenure at Stanford has seen him coach players like Maverick McNealy and Patrick Rodgers and that Ray played on the same Stanford team as Tiger Woods.
It’s a compliment Thorbjornsen doesn’t take lightly, but one he’s willing to accept.
“It’s a little shocking, but I do feel like I can hit the ball well,” Thorbjornsen said as he prepared to lead Stanford in this week’s Prestige at PGA West tournament. “When I’m on, I’m on. I can compete with anyone in the world when I am feeling good, when the body is feeling good, when it comes to ball striking.”
The 24-team Prestige college golf tournament continues through Wednesday at the Greg Norman Course at PGA West, as well as an individual tournament being played at Terra Lago Golf Resort in Indio.
The 22-year-old Thorbjornsen comes to the desert this week as the No. 4 player in the world amateur rankings, but perhaps more importantly as the No. 1 ranked player in the PGA Tour U standings. Should Thorbjornsen keep the No. 1 ranking for the rest of the spring and through the NCAA Championships, he would gain an automatic exemption to the PGA Tour, just as last year’s Prestige individual winner Ludvig Aberg of Texas Tech did. Aberg already has wins on the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, a path Thoirbjornsen would like to follow.
“I have my own personal goals and just starting from very young junior golf, when I was 6 or 7 years old,” Thorbjornsen said. “I wanted to be the best starting at that age. Kind of at every level, I’m trying to be the best I can possibly be and so here we are toward the end of my amateur career, trying to be the best and as we head into professional golf, I’ll try to do the same as well. So I am always setting more goals, trying to reach higher levels.”
Those goals have been difficult for Thorbjornsen in the last year. A stress fracture in his back knocked him out of the U.S. Amateur last summer and kept him off the course for months. He returned to competition last month with an 11th-place finish in the Hero Dubai Desert Classic on the DP World Tour, finishing ahead of golfers like Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrell Hatton.
Ray says it is Thorbjornsen’s performance in events outside of college golf that justifies him being considered perhaps golf’s…
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