Luke Clanton wants this. Badly. He always has.

It’s why his three-putt on the 72nd hole of last year’s U.S. Open, losing low amateur honors to Neal Shipley, fueled a historic run of PGA TOUR success as an amateur that led him to a PGA TOUR card.

It’s why more than a decade prior, as an elementary schooler, he would practice his short game until nearly midnight at a local muni near his childhood home outside Miami – to the point where course staff sometimes shooed him away (good-naturedly; they wanted him to get some sleep).

This is all he ever wanted to do. Now he’s here. Clanton is a PGA TOUR pro effective at this week’s RBC Canadian Open, as he earned his card by accruing 20 PGA TOUR University Accelerated points between last year’s U.S. Open and this year’s Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches on the strength of nearly unprecedented PGA TOUR success as a college golfer. Clanton notched four PGA TOUR top-10 finishes in 2024 (including two runner-up finishes), becoming the first amateur since Jack Nicklaus in 1961 with three or more top-10 finishes on TOUR in a year.

Clanton feels he’s ready for the biggest stage, and the stats back it up, as amateurs simply don’t author these results in the hyper-competitive PGA TOUR ecosystem. (For context, Tiger Woods’ best finish in 14 TOUR starts as an amateur was T22.) Clanton, who stood atop the World Amateur Golf Ranking before turning pro this week, has all the makings of an elite professional golfer – and elite pros recognize it, too.

“There are certain people that their golf ball makes a different sound when they hit than others, and his is definitely one of them,” said Justin Thomas, who played alongside Clanton for two rounds at this year’s WM Phoenix Open. “He wasn’t shy and wasn’t scared of the moment. So I know he’s going to come out here ready to go.”

After honing his game for the past three years at Florida State, and since his early childhood in south Florida, Clanton intends to meet the moment.

Clanton rose the ranks from humble beginnings. His mom Rhonda, a Delta flight attendant for four decades who officially retired June 1, worked countless evening and weekend shifts while home-schooling Luke and his two sisters, Ray and Abby, by day. Their dad David, a landscaper who also ran a glass business, regularly began his workday at 4 a.m. – then would spend the evenings with Luke on the practice area at Country Club of Miami (don’t let the name deceive you), a gritty municipal track in Clanton’s hometown of Hialeah, Florida, that also offered a few pitch-and-putt holes with artificial greens. On these incredibly firm greens, Clanton honed his distance control with wedges deep into the evening.

“This is where he got to No. 1 (amateur) in the world,” David Clanton said while touring the facility last month.

Golf is an expensive game and the Clantons weren’t broke, they were just of modest means – “The poor people in golf,” as Rhonda likes to say. Accordingly, they nicknamed themselves the "Country Club Outlaws" (yes, there’s merch). Clanton didn’t have his own golf clubs until TaylorMade set him up at age 11 – before that, he’d borrow clubs from a neighborhood family with two boys, one older than Luke and one younger. When the older boy outgrew the clubs, Luke would use them until the younger boy grew into them. Clanton was afforded free or deeply discounted practice at both Country Club of Miami and the driving range at nearby C.B. Smith Park, and in the truest sense, he dug it out of the dirt.

He has always wanted it. He just needed to hone it in.

Clanton spent three years at Florida State, pursuing a major in interdisciplinary social science, and although he didn’t complete his degree, he envisions someday returning to Tallahassee to complete it (he knows his mom would appreciate it as well). This week, Clanton trades undergrad status for a spot in the professional workforce, but he spent time recently reflecting on how far he has come since arriving as a high-wired freshman in fall 2022. It’s a short span in the grand scheme, but it’s closer to a lifetime when considering his dramatic progression. Clanton was a highly accomplished junior player, coveted by several high-end NCAA programs, but Florida State men’s golf coach Trey Jones had a message that resonated: he would have to earn his spot in the Seminoles' starting lineup. Clanton craved that accountability, part of why he never seriously considered turning pro out of high school (like Blades Brown or Aldrich Potgieter in recent years). Clanton wasn’t ready, and didn’t have any illusions that he was.

How would an immediate high school-to-professional golf transition have gone, Clanton was asked recently?

“Terrible, terrible, terrible,” he replied. “I mean, from when I was 18 years old, I was an idiot. The best way to put it.”

That reality is hidden by his current-day poise, which is evident everywhere. While contending at TOUR events throughout last summer and fall (including runner-up finishes at the John Deere Classic and The RSM Classic), Clanton remained consistent that his main objective was chasing a national championship with Florida State, which has never won a national title in men’s golf. Professional golf was on the doorstep, he knew, but he was in no hurry to get there. (Florida State finished ninth at last month’s NCAA Championship, a bittersweet end to Clanton’s college career).

He showed a capability to keep the pedal down on more benign setups – like shooting 24 under at the John Deere – or grind it out in tough conditions like at this year’s Farmers Insurance Open, where he placed T15 at Torrey Pines at 1 under. Clanton buckled down when things weren’t going well: At the WM Phoenix Open, needing to make the cut to clinch his TOUR card via PGA TOUR University Accelerated, he was five strokes outside the cut line with eight holes to play before going 4 under to the house and missing by just one. In his next start, the Cognizant Classic in South Florida (which he attended as a kid and played in the pro-am alongside Kevin Kisner as a high schooler), he made the cut to clinch his TOUR card.

These past three years at Florida State accelerated that poise, the missing link that converted Clanton from an intriguing prospect to a potential superstar whose name is already being floated as a potential U.S. Team captain’s pick for this fall’s Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black.

At Clanton’s first college event, the Maui Jim Intercollegiate in Arizona, he was dehydrated early in the first round and carded a 78. He wanted it too badly. He struggled with his driver in his nascent college days – “He literally couldn’t hit a golf ball on the planet there for a while,” remembered Jones. As a college freshman, Clanton was away from his parents for the first time; he was a bit homesick, and he was also eager to explore everything that college life had to offer.

“He came in high-energy, so ready to go,” said Clanton’s three-year teammate Gray Albright, who finished No. 23 on the recent PGA TOUR University Ranking to earn PGA TOUR Americas status for this summer’s North America Swing. “He was a little bit … all over the place, kind of bouncing around to different places, doing different things, talking to people. He hasn’t lost that, but he's kind of honed it in on what needs to be done and what's going to help us the best.”

Essentially, Clanton was a kid who needed to grow up a bit – yes, the same kid who proved he belonged on TOUR from the very moment he teed it up. It’s a reminder that although elite golfers are often inclined to present the most polished version of themselves in the public eye, they’re probably still learning and growing. Life is more complex than just “sticking to the process” – even though a strong process will likely yield strong results.

In his Florida State debut, after all, Clanton was still developing that process for maximizing his potential in the game.

“Heart rate was really high. Couldn’t catch his breath,” Jones described Clanton’s first college event. “I walked every shot with him. And a lot of that was anxiety … it was a different stage for him and different pressures that he put on himself.

“So from that round to where he was, still where he is now is, it's really incredible and a testament to him. And his family.”

Where is he now? He’s still a kid who craves Chipotle daily and loves playing video games with his three-year Seminole roommate Jack Bigham, but he’s also a 21-year-old adult with big goals as a PGA TOUR pro.

“In five years, I will be a major champion,” Clanton said last month, a statement that was less cocky and more confident in his lifetime body of work.

Rhonda Clanton recently recalled that final day of the 2024 U.S. Open and her son’s heartbreaking three-putt from 5 feet on the 72nd hole that ceded low amateur honors to Shipley. At the time, he wanted to be alone.

“He didn’t want to go talk to the media, and his agent (Ben Walter) said, ‘You’re going to have to go talk to them,'" Rhonda recalled.

Fast-forward eight months to the WM Phoenix Open, where he missed a 19-footer to make the cut that would’ve clinched his TOUR card. Walter asked Clanton if he needed a few minutes to compose himself. Nope, Clanton said, he was ready to chat.

“That’s the improvement he’s shown over the last nine months to a year,” Rhonda said. “Luke is not an attention seeker … but he understands that people are going to want a piece of you, and you’ve got to be willing to give it because that’s part of the process.”

Clanton wants to be here – and he’s ready for whatever that spotlight entails.