'I feel like I can beat anyone': Is Jackson Koivun ready for the PGA Tour? - ESPN

CARLSBAD, Calif. — Meghan Koivun always walks ahead of the action.

When her son, Jackson, swings and the fans near him look up to see where his ball is going, Meghan is already standing by the fairway or green where she can get a better view. To know where Jackson's ProV1 — always a no. 1 — is headed, all she needs to do is look at him.

«I've probably watched him play golf more than anyone,» Meghan said. «To this day, I can still read him like a book.»

It was Jackson's dad George who introduced him to the game when he was just a toddler as a way to give Meghan time off on the weekends. But by the time Jackson was 4 and had gotten a taste for winning medals and bobbleheads in junior competitions, golf became all he wanted to do. It was Meghan, then, who spent the late summer nights at the driving range watching her son send balls into the air until it was dark out.

«I just got to know his game,» Meghan says. «I knew what he needed and wanted, the good signs and the bad signs.»

Beside the 16th green at La Costa's North Course — the host course for the NCAA championships where Jackson has led the top-ranked Auburn Tigers — Meghan looks away for a moment and allows herself to reflect on her son's ascent.

The boy who used to show up to the course for casual rounds dressed like a pro — collared shirt tucked into pants with a belt — was now the No. 1 amateur in the world. He had just put together one of the most successful seasons of golf in college history, winning six times in the span of three months and securing every national player of the year award for the second time in his college career — a feat no one else had ever achieved.

«It's been a pretty cool ride,» Meghan says, her tears not quite visible behind her