PGA Tour Players to Follow: Steve Palmer highlights golf's rising stars

Maverick McNealy

Top Gun 2 is released in the summer and Maverick Mitchell will be dazzling cinema-goers – and by then another Maverick may be making headlines on the PGA Tour. Mav McNealy seems ready to start realising his potential.

McNealy debated long and hard about a career in golf, despite being world number one amateur at the time, because he has a sharp business brain and thought his skills may be better served outside of sport. The 24-year-old Californian has committed to golf, though, and is starting to establish himself on the PGA Tour.

Six consecutive cuts made are a sign of McNealy settling on the circuit and his brilliance as an amateur seems highly likely to translate into PGA Tour glory at some stage. Having a billionaire father means the enormous PGA Tour pay cheques will never intimidate him.

Kristoffer Ventura

Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff are not the only members of Oklahoma State University who have moved on to the PGA Tour – their pal Kris Ventura also has a PGA Tour card and is capable of a maiden success next year.

Ventura, who was born in Mexico and moved to Norway in 2007, won twice on the Korn Ferry Tour last season to propel himself into the big time. The Danish Hojgaard brothers have been making waves on the European Tour, while Hovland and Ventura are impressing Stateside, so the European Ryder Cup team could have a heavy Scandinavian presence in future.

Justin Suh

Hovland, Wolff, Collin Morikawa and Justin Suh were the college superstars who were expected to take the PGA Tour by storm in the second half of this year. The first three have delivered, but it has not gone to plan for Suh, who has been forced to switch his attention to the South American circuit.

Expect Suh, an awesome performer at the University of Southern California, to take advantage of any PGA Tour invites he gets next year. The powerhouse was suffering with a wrist injury while Wolff and Morikawa were making merry in the summer, so his chance disappeared, but he started his South American adventure with form figures of 4-2-10-7 and a world ranking of 1,041 does not get close to reflecting his actual ability.

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