Eric Cole Wants to Extend His Story Beyond Rookie of the Year

Laura Baugh claimed LPGA Rookie of the Year honors but never won a tournament—history her son doesn't want to repeat.

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Eric Cole made a point to acknowledge the symmetry attached to his 2023 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year honor when it was announced in Hawaii last week. The longtime mini-tour pro who made it to the big leagues last season and took advantage noted that his mother, Laura Baugh, was the LPGA Tour rookie of the year in 1973—50 years ago.

Although obviously excellent golfers—Cole’s father, Bobby, was also a longtime tour pro—their paths were quite different.

Baugh was a phenom. She won the U.S. Women’s Amateur at age 16. When she was rookie of the year, she was just 18 years old. In her career, Baugh had 71 top-10 finishes but never won.

Cole would like to change that part of his story. Unlike his mom, Cole took a long path to the PGA Tour. He is 35 and never had full status before last year. He won 56 times on the Minor League Golf Tour and earned his Korn Ferry Tour card in 2017, only to lose it, then got it back in 2021 and tied for third at the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour Championship to earn his card for the 2022-23 PGA Tour season.

Eric Cole, pictured at the Sentry, is set for all the signature events this year on the PGA Tour :: Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports

After a rough start in the fall (he had COVID-19 and then his golf clubs were stolen), Cole found some momentum early last year, eventually contending at the Honda Classic, where he lost in a sudden-death playoff to Chris Kirk. He played well enough the rest of the year to finish 43rd in the FedEx Cup standings, meaning he is exempt for all eight of the $20 million signature events, including The Sentry, where he began the year ranked 41st in the world and finished T14.

"It was a long year and I got a lot of comments that I played a lot, but I was just so happy to be out on Tour finally and any chance I had to compete on Tour just felt like a huge privilege," Cole said. “I didn’t get off to the best start missing some early cuts, but then kind of got it together a little bit and started to play really consistently and pretty well there the last half of the year and kind of capped it off with a pretty good fall, so it was awesome."

Cole had four top-five finishes in the FedEx Fall even though this status for this year was secure. Now he hopes to build on the opportunities he will have going forward. Cole is competing this week at the Sony Open, the first full-field event of the year, and will also be part of the field next month at Pebble Beach and Riviera, the next signature events.

Along the way, he’ll likely inspire some of the players who have been grinding behind the scenes like he did for so long.

"I'm friends with a lot of guys that are still playing mini-tour golf and I talk to them a lot throughout the year," he said. "They have been kind of watching the success I've had this year and I think it's just a testament to how many good players there are and how deep the talent pool is in golf. The separating factors between having success and not are so thin, so definitely hopefully kind of shed some light on that."