Golfers, and athletes of all sports really, take pride in where they’re from. Whether it’s the state, city or area code – you always notice players wanting to rep their home area.
The whole Ryder Cup is basically built on the principle of competing and representing where you’re from.
Fans tend to do the same thing. It’s always more fun to pull for a player when they’re from your home state (or even your hometown).
With all that in mind, we went through the World Golf Rankings and pulled the home states (or countries) of every player in the top 200 (as of 5/19/23).
28 of the 50 states in the US have at least one player representing them in that top 200.
North Carolina has 5 players out of that top 200. That may not seem like a lot, but it’s actually very impressive that 2.5% of the top golfers in the WORLD come from the state of North Carolina.
It also ties North Carolina with South Carolina for the 4th most of any US state, behind only California, Texas and Florida (all much larger states than the two Carolinas).
Here are the five golfers from North Carolina in the World Golf Rankings top 200 in the spring of 2023 including what town they’re from.
| Name | City |
|---|---|
| Ben Griffin | Chapel Hill |
| J.T. Poston | Hickory |
| Tom Hoge | Statesville |
| Webb Simpson | Raleigh |
| Will Gordon | Davidson |
Golf Hometown Fun Facts
California has the most golfers of any state in the top 200 with 21. Second most is Texas with 8, followed by Florida (7), and North Carolina and South Carolina with 5 each.
California actually has more players than any country (outside the US) in the top 200 as well. England has the most, 15, of any foreign country.
More States
We are slowly but surely adding our golfer hometown resources to the site. Here are a few of the other states published so far:
Current Pro Men’s Golfers from New York