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 sunglasses but audible in her breaking voice. "We don't put any pressure on. He's our only child and we gave him everything we could. It's just wonderful to see his dreams coming true."
Meghan stops speaking and glances up toward the elevated tee box just in time to see Jackson lean on a pitching wedge into this short, downhill par 3. From where she's standing, she isn't able to see exactly where the ball lands but as soon as Jackson lingers on his follow-through, she knows.
"He likes it," Meghan says. The ball nearly goes in.
A few days later, Jackson would go on to help Auburn secure its second national title in three years. Soon after, he announced that, a year after earning his PGA Tour card, he would turn professional following his final competition as an amateur -- the 2026 U.S. Open.
This is the end of Jackson's story as an amateur. For Jackson, the golfer, this is only the beginning. But the sport, as of late, has not been kind to recent college standouts.
At this level, where Adam Scott is set to play in his 100th straight major and Scottie Scheffler exists, golf demands more than just talent. The PGA Tour brushes away collegiate accolades with the swift, brutal reality of missed cuts and it turns sky-high expectations into vexing valleys. Even as Jackson has proved he can win at every level prior, the question looms: Can he do it on the PGA Tour?
"I just trust that my game is good enough," Koivun told ESPN. "I feel like I can beat anyone. It might sound a little cocky, but at the end of the day, some of those best players in the world have that internal cockiness too and that's where I'm trying to go."
EVERY WEEKDAY MORNING, the man behind Jackson Koivun's swing wakes up and heads to Cinnabar Hills Golf Course just south of San Jose, California, to open up the pro shop. Fred Garcia has been doing a version of this for 27 years now -- at 66, he's a golf lifer who still checks in the morning regulars for their tee times so he can devote his afternoons to his true love: giving lessons.
On top of the 40 hours he works in the pro shop, Garcia averages about 20 to 25 lessons a week. His fee is a reasonable $125 per hour and, despite not having any kind of advertising or social media presence, he is booked up.
"Everyone tells me I should charge more, they say 'You're Jackson's coach, raise your prices!'" Garcia said with a laugh. "It's not about the money. People always tell me that I can retire, but I feel I can give lessons as long as I'm here. I just love it."
It's not sufficient to call Garcia Koivun's swing coach. Just spend some time around the two and you'll notice a deeper bond. Watch them walk from hole to hole during a practice round and it's obvious that to understand sport's best amateur you have to get to know the quiet man in a visor shuffling behind him.
"He's a mental coach, he's a physical coach, he's a friend, he's a mentor, he's somebody that JK really respects and trusts," Auburn head coach Nick Clinard said. "He knows him inside and out emotionally, mentally and physically. I think he's that calming influence when things aren't going well, and he's also somebody that can be pretty stern with him when it's needed."
"None of us touch him and Fred's relationship," Meghan said. "That's a sacred space."
Jackson began practicing at Cinnabar when he was 6 and once he turned 10, the two began working together. Quickly, Garcia realized that in Koivun he had a kid who was prepared to spend every possible second on the golf course if it meant he would win the next tournament, so he settled on a strategy. There would be plenty of work on technique and a focus on everything from long game to short game, but Garcia put more weight on taking Koivun out to the golf course and having him talk through every shot, scenario or decision. By 13, Garcia had Koivun playing alongside the older, better players at Cinnabar in order to expose him to tougher competition.
"There were some hiccups, you're going from really good in the Bay Area to the AJGA events and there's a lot of Jackson Koivuns there, right?" Garcia said. "So he got beat up a little bit, but then he started winning."
George and Meghan knew their son was talented, so they started branching out, taking Jackson to more tournaments farther away from their home to see how he would measure up. In 2019, they took him all the way to Alabama where he played in the Future Masters tournament, won his age division and impressed SEC coaches.
"Our job was to get him to tournaments because he just kept winning," George said. "The minute I felt like he got to the top, he just kept getting better."
Four years ago, when the Koivuns made a decision to relocate from California to North Carolina, Garcia expected to hear that they were going to have to move on from him and find a local coach for Jackson. Instead, they called asking how they could make it work. And so, the videocall lessons and check-ins began.
"Fred has such a belief in him," Meghan said. "I was complaining once that Jackson was changing putters too often and he just tells me, 'Meghan, Jackson can putt with a Coke bottle. Don't worry about it.'" From across the country, Garcia, to this day, will watch Koivun go through his swing on the phone and see if there are any problems needing a fix. It's never a big change, Garcia says, just tweaks of simple things like ball position, but what he's found when they do their customary talk through the most recent tournament is that Koivun is never satisfied.
"We'll be FaceTiming after a tournament he won and he'll show me his swing and ask my thoughts because he feels like he left some shots out there," Garcia said. "I say 'Jackson, you won by four.'"
When he is on site, Garcia will walk every hole that Koivun plays, often sneaking behind him on a tee box to grab a video down the line of his swing, just in case. His phone is an encyclopedia of Koivun swing videos that go back to his pre-teen days. His swing, Garcia said, much like their north star hasn't changed.
"When we started, everything was built around doing whatever we needed to do to get him ready to win the next tournament he was going to play," Garcia said. "It's always been about winning for him. He doesn't give a crap about making cuts or second place. He wants to win. And he doesn't just want to win; he wants to dominate. If he gets a four-shot lead, he wants five shots."
WHEN HE FIRST arrived at Auburn, Jackson's pedigree was obvious, but he was 17 years old and, to Clinard and the rest of Auburn's staff, it showed. Whether it was how upset he got at his bad shots and play or how quickly -- too quickly -- he played, there were clear areas for growth.
"His freshman year he was way more immature," Clinard said. "Now he's way more in control of his emotions. He's less dramatic. I think that's part of the process, but you don't want to take out the fire. If you take that out, he wouldn't be as good as he is."
With the help of Garcia and Clinard, Koivun has learned to manage his emotions and not let them affect his next shot. Once, in order to try and slow him down, Clinard -- who walked with Koivun during his rounds throughout his college career -- refused to give him the yardage to a shot for 30 seconds so he could take his time.
In the same way that his parents responded to Koivun's success as a kid by taking him to bigger and bigger events to see where he stood, Clinard and Auburn challenged Koivun not just to get better for the sake of their program but to help him get ready for the PGA Tour.
"He doesn't play for notoriety; he plays for trophies," Clinard said. "You can tell that he doesn't want to just play the PGA Tour. He wants to play in Ryder Cups, he wants to contend at major championships. and that's what he feels like he was put on this earth to do."
In retrospect, it's no surprise then that when Koivun earned enough points as part of the PGA Tour U program to secure his card last May, the decision to turn pro or return to Auburn hinged on something beyond the results. As Clinard put it, Koivun knew that, at 19 years old, he was not prepared to sit in a hotel room with his mom after missing cuts.
"I just knew I wasn't ready," Koivun said this week ahead of the U.S. Open. "I think my golf game was there. I just think I wasn't ready to leave college, and mentally just wasn't ready for the potential hardships and the travel and everything like that. But taking another year to really wrap my mind around that was good for me. Now I'm definitely ready."
PICTURES OF THE letters still live on Meghan's phone. One, addressed to Titleist by a 10-year-old Koivun, asked if the club manufacturer had any sponsorship opportunities for juniors. He included, of course, his tournament record and asked what he needed to do to get their backing. The other, addressed to his parents, is an essay of sorts explaining why, in great detail, he needed a new putter.
"He had a very clear vision for who we wanted to be, even when was just a kid," Garcia said. "He wanted to win on the PGA Tour. You need that kind of belief to make it."
Chris Williams had that belief too, once. Fourteen years ago, the now Auburn assistant head coach found himself just where Koivun is now -- the top-ranked amateur and winner of the Ben Hogan award. Williams turned pro in 2013, but by 2015, he had no better finishes in 10 PGA Tour starts than a T-30.
These days, Williams has become yet another key figure on Koivun's team, caddying for him in several of his PGA Tour starts, including at last year's U.S. Open, while also being a sounding board for late-night conversations about anything from practice structure to how life is on tour.
"Chris has been there. He has done it at the highest level and he has failed at the highest level," Clinard said. "He can tell you what went right and what went wrong for him."
After turning pro, Williams stayed in Seattle and didn't surround himself with people who were pushing him to be better. He chased the money, he said, and prioritized big endorsement deals and sponsorships with different club manufacturers over sticking with what was best for his game. So, Williams can speak as somebody who has gone through what Koivun is about to experience.
"I was like, 'I know you won't, but at the same time, I'm not going to let you make these mistakes,'" Williams said. "I think I have such an endearment towards him as like I almost wanted to in a weird way maybe protect him just from all the other stuff that goes on."
While Koivun remained an amateur last fall, he was able to secure exemptions into several PGA Tour events that allowed him to see where he stood before making the leap. But Koivun was never simply happy to be there. He has always wanted to measure up.
"He is a fairly high-anxiety kind of kid," Williams said. "His first year, he came into our office worried about qualifying for the lineup when he had maybe the best freshman fall that anyone's ever had at Auburn. "
In seven starts on tour as an amateur, Koivun had three top-10 finishes, but there is something different about the novelty of moonlighting as a pro and the reality of being out there on your own with no college team to go back to. How will he manage his time on and off the course? What about the isolation? The losing?
"For me it's just finding acceptance in golf," Koivun said. "Obviously coming into any event, I'm going to try to win it, but not pushing too hard and accepting that it's not a game where you win every week."
There is no foolproof way to transition to the highest level of the sport, but Koivun's team is trying its best to cover all its bases. They are well aware that rookies on the PGA Tour don't always take well to their new lifestyle and it can often seep into their game.
"He's used to being by himself and I think we've been fortunate to have the time to build a team around him that will pop in here and there," Meghan said. "We'll probably come back more into the picture. As a mom, you got to let him go, let him figure it out, but our relationship has changed. He's relying on a lot more stuff because now it's like 'Hey, let's get your taxes paid.'"
The extra year at Auburn helped Jackson get ready for the move not just emotionally but logistically. Over the past year, he has started to structure his own practices and added Josh Gregory as a short game coach too. On advice from Williams as well as Williams' former agent and Jackson's current agent, Lance Young, Koivun moved to Jupiter earlier this month after the NCAAs. He is an incoming member at nearby Panther National, Justin Thomas' course, and has developed a relationship with Thomas and other pros like Russell Henley.
"I told him, 'Go spend time with Justin, go be around him, go play practice times with him,'" Williams said. "I've been just encouraging him to be around those guys more often and get comfortable being around those guys, because those are the guys that are going to push you every day."
Winning has come naturally for Jackson throughout his life, but the Koivuns are careful not to let it become something that is taken for granted. They are aware that winning at the next stage will not be easy and it will come with even more eyeballs, more scrutiny, more pressure and require more work. The expectations, even from those within his circle, are not getting any lower. "I see him as being a guy who will probably be on the PGA Tour for 30 years," Williams said. "He'll win a couple majors and have multiple PGA Tour wins."
WATCHING ATOP ANOTHER hill at La Costa, well removed from the crowds while Jackson drains another birdie putt, Meghan wonders aloud about her son's cooking.
He can grill well enough, she says, but she's hoping he can get better at preparing more meals both as a way to feed himself but also create healthy distractions. Fishing is one thing he has taken up and enjoyed on his off time, but gravity always seems to pull him back toward the golf course.
"I think he decompresses when he's at the course by himself and no one is around," Meghan said. "I think that's his downtime, when he can work on whatever he wants."
Meghan knows that Jackson's relentless confidence and drive are part of what has brought her son here. She's well aware that the golf course that brings out the competitive fire in him is also the place where he is most comfortable, aware too that the sport he has loved won't always love him back.
"He's a perfectionist playing an imperfect game," Meghan said. "But he believes that he's one of the best and that he's going to stay one of the best."
Even while often watching Jackson from well down the fairway or keeping up with his score on her phone, Meghan has had a front row seat to it all the past 21 years. Wherever it goes, up or down, she is ready to see it through.