GOLFTOWN JOURNAL
The U.S. Kids Catapult
A stepping stone to the top
By Lee Pace
There is a chance by the time these words hit your mailbox or coffee table that Ben Griffin of Chapel Hill will be teeing it up at Bethpage Black in the 2025 Ryder Cup. At the end of July, he was within reach of an automatic berth for the American team or being a captain’s choice by Keegan Bradley by virtue of his breakthrough year — solo victory in Fort Worth, team win in New Orleans and a total of eight Top 10 finishes, including the U.S. Open and PGA Championship.
And if not this year, another, perhaps.
Whatever success, including and beyond making a Ryder Cup team, that the 29-year-old might enjoy, he can look back to three years from 2009-11 competing in the U.S. Kids summer competitions in Pinehurst as a bedrock to his development:
2009 — Ninth place in the age 13 division.
2010 — First place in the 14 division.
2011 — First place in the 15-18 division.
“Ben had quite a run in Pinehurst,” says his dad, Cowan Griffin, who caddied for his son all three years. “It was a perfect environment to learn what competitive golf was all about. You were around class acts. The U.S. Kids produced a young man that respected his opponent, was courteous and kind, you treat each other fairly. You’re honest. It promotes just a slew of great traits for your future. That’s exactly what it did with Ben.”
More than a decade later, with his son among the elite of the PGA Tour, Cowan thinks back on that three-year run and enjoys the reflections. He chuckles at the memory of taking Ben to Pinehurst No. 6 in 2009 and having no idea that parents generally caddied for their children in U.S. Kids events. He dashed to the Belk store in Southern Pines for shorts, sneakers and golf shirts. He remembers Ben asking — and Cowan refusing to answer — where Ben stood through 16 holes in the final round in 2010 at No. 8, then being gratified to see the boy refocus, birdie the par-5 17th and win by one. He marvels at having watched Ben’s creative recovery shots on No. 2 in collecting the older boys’ division title in 2011.
“Ben was a real gritty player, and if he got in any trouble, he could manipulate his hands and make the ball hook or cut or go straight up in the air, almost like Phil Mickelson-type hands,” Cowan says. “Anywhere he was, he had an answer. “
As the U.S. Kids Teen World Championship was hitting its 20th anniversary in Pinehurst in early August 2025, Ben Griffin was an hour away, teeing it up on the PGA Tour in the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, shooting four rounds in the 60s and finishing in a tie for 11th. He was seventh on the money list with $8.1 million.
That’s an amazing story for someone who inhaled the game of golf until their mid-20s, chucked the dream for a year in 2020 to enter private business, and a year later came back with a new set of priorities, and a refreshed game and mindset.
“It’s been an incredible journey, but since I’ve come back to golf I’ve put my mind to being one of the top players in the game, getting into the majors, getting into contention and winning on the PGA Tour,” Griffin says. “I’ve checked a lot of those boxes now, but I have to continue to keep the pedal down.”
Griffin was a golfer from near infancy. Cowan got into golf because his father, Douglas, loved the game, and he outfitted young Ben with a set of clubs as soon as Ben could walk. He was smitten from the beginning.
“We called him ‘Little Ben’ around the club,” says Rick Brannon, the Chapel Hill Country Club head golf pro from 1983 to 2017. “I can remember him on the range at 5 years old. He had a set of hand-me-down irons that were an inch longer than standard. The golf club was bigger than Ben almost. He had a motorcycle grip early on because that was the only way he could hit those long clubs.”
The talent he wielded at Pinehurst with U.S. Kids evolved over the years. Competing for East Chapel Hill High, Griffin won two state 4-A titles. And he shot 61 in the Dogwood Amateur at Druid Hills in Atlanta.
There was never any question about where Griffin would play collegiately (both of his parents are UNC grads), and he was in the Tar Heels’ starting lineup all four spring seasons from 2015-18. After leaving college, Griffin bumped around the various “minor league” tours, traveling to Canada, Latin America and across the U.S. on the Korn Ferry Tour. Then COVID-19 hit in the spring of 2020, and the golf season on the PGA Tour and all the satellite circuits were cancelled. Griffin was in debt to his sponsors and had nowhere to play.
“I wasn’t making any money,” Griffin says. “I wasn’t able to pay my own rent without help from parents, and health insurance, whatever it might be. I was 24, 25 at the time, and I was like, it’s a point in my life where I don’t want to have to rely on my parents for anything.
“It wasn’t necessarily like I disliked golf or anything. I still loved it. I was actually getting better. I felt like I was doing some really good stuff with my coach. But financially, I was in such a big hole. I didn’t see myself digging a way out of it.”
That’s when Griffin decided he was done with professional golf. He landed a job in early 2021 as a residential mortgage loan officer with Corporate Investors Mortgage Group in Chapel Hill and began working each day at the company’s headquarters at East 54, just a couple of hundred yards from the 16th hole at Finley.
“When I stepped away from golf, I was completely done,” he says, adding he envisioned golf as being a weekend distraction and a way to help his professional career with client golf.
As the summer of 2021 wore on, he started having second thoughts. His grandfather died on July 15, and the obituary included a reference to his love of golf. Doug Griffin’s motto was “hit them long and straight.”
Soon after, Griffin was driving to work one morning and absentmindedly turned onto Finley Golf Course Road instead of into the East 54 complex.
“I wasn’t thinking that much about golf at all, but these little signs kept popping up,” Griffin says. “Reading my granddad’s quote made me realize my dreams are on the golf course. I’d lie awake in bed and say, ‘Do I need to chase this dream one more time?’”
Griffin decided that he did. He has never looked back.
Lord Abbett CEO Doug Sieg organized an investor group to underwrite Griffin’s return to traveling the tour, and that November, he shot 71-74-64-71 and tied for 29th at Korn Ferry Tour Q-School. That locked up Korn Ferry Tour membership for 2022 (no more Monday qualifying), where he finished eighth in points to get a PGA Tour card for 2023.
“It’s easy to get caught as a mini-tour golfer, stuck like, man, this is so hard, my back is against the wall,” Griffin says. “So instead of that mindset, I had a more forward-thinking mindset of I’m already one of the best players in the world. I just have to go out there and prove it.”
They’ve known of that potential around Pinehurst for more than a decade.