Luke Clanton's coach shares insights into star pupil's transition to PGA Tour

Jeff Leishman is one of the top 100 golf coaches in America, according to Golf.com, and his resume includes multiple pupils who went on to play at Florida State.

Leishman coached PGA Tour pro and FSU alum Daniel Berger since early in his high school career, and he has been the coach of recent Seminole superstar Luke Clanton as well.

As Clanton’s swing coach for years, Leishman has helped throughout his entire college career and now as he makes his second pro start at the Travelers Championship this week. Clanton made his official pro debut two weeks ago at the RBC Canadian Open.

While the former Florida State star didn’t make the cut in his first event out of college, Leishman told Warchant he has no doubt Clanton will adjust quickly.

“The next step is to move from college golf into professional golf, but I would even say in his case, the step is not really that big because he’s already performed very well at the professional level — even though he wasn’t a pro when it was going on,” Leishman said. “But he certainly demonstrated he has the skills to be able to do that. So mostly, it’s about just continuing that momentum from the past year.”

Having mentored several tour professionals through the years, Leishman has gotten to see what traits those top golfers have in common. When it comes to Clanton, the veteran coach told Warchant he has, “the competitiveness combined with an impatience.”

Leishman, who is based out of Jupiter, Fla., said it’s uncommon for a player of Clanton’s age and experience to be as comfortable as he is on the biggest stages.

“Luke seems to perform better in those environments. And that’s not normal,” Leishman said, adding that Clanton also has shown the ability to learn through adversity.

Just a few weeks ago, Clanton and the Florida State men’s golf team failed to make the match play portion of the NCAA national championships after having a tough time on the par-three eighth hole at Omni La Costa in Carlsbad, Calif.

While that was an extremely difficult way for Clanton to finish his decorated college career — he also was named national Player of the Year this season — Leishman is confident his player will benefit from it. Just as he did when the Seminoles came up just short of a national title one year earlier.

“He would have put the responsibility of both of those pretty heavily right on his own shoulders, and that’s probably unfair. Because there’s other members of the team that are part of that,” Leishman said. “But the fact that those didn’t work out and that they played out publicly, especially last year’s national championship where it came down to his match and, you know, quite frankly, it didn’t happen. The burden of that and then the emotional toll that takes on people, sometimes people figure out that they don’t really want that. They don’t really want to be in that situation.

“They don’t want the ball in that moment, where Luke does. So that part’s not normal.”

The longtime golf swing coach said Clanton was “banged up a little bit” emotionally by not winning a national championship, but he also knows there isn’t any time to dwell on it as his professional career is just getting started.

“I wouldn’t say that that’s anything that is going to deter the momentum that he’s gathered in the last year,” Leishman said. “And to be frank, I’ll be part of making sure that that doesn’t happen.”

Throughout his career, Leishman has seen and worked with an untold number of promising junior golfers, and he could tell early on that Clanton had some qualities that are difficult to teach.

There are the physical traits, including the impressive speed of his golf swing, all the way to the mental approach. The former Florida State star is always thinking about how he can get better, Leishman said. “Which is part of the curse of wanting to be great at an individual sport — it just never seems like it’s good enough.”

Leishman said those are characteristics that all of the great ones possess.

“His connection with his faith, all these things are traits that are … well, I mean, they’re certainly common with the best player in the world now, Scottie Scheffler,” Leishman said. “I’m not making a comparison to him. It’s just more that, OK, you start to see these similar things that are essentially abnormalities. Like people who do this at a very high level are not normal. They’re very abnormal.”

Clanton will make his first start in a PGA Tour Signature event at TPC River Highlands in the Travelers Championship today at 1:55 p.m. on ESPN+ and PGA Tour live.

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