Michael Thorbjornsen plays with a 10-finger, baseball-style grip that almost no one else on the PGA Tour uses. It’s an odd detail for a player who just beat a field that included Xander Schauffele, Hideki Matsuyama, and Tony Finau to win the final Rocket Classic at Detroit Golf Club, claiming the biggest share of the $10 million purse and sparking plenty of curiosity along the way.
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But his unusual setup is far from the only fascinating piece of his puzzle. Behind golf’s newest breakout star lies a journey shaped by an extraordinary childhood prodigy moment, deep Wellesley roots, an unlikely hometown team-up on the Tour’s biggest stages, and even a bold prediction from Rory McIlroy that looks eerily prophetic today.
Here are 10 things you may not know about Michael Thorbjornsen.
- An eight-month-old prodigy in the living room
Before he could even walk, Michael Thorbjornsen was already hitting 60 golf balls a day. His mother, Sandra, set up a mat and net inside their home. There, an eight-month-old Michael built his own unique swing. “He’d put a ball on the tee, sit down, put a full-sized club under his right armpit, twist his body, and hit the ball,” Sandra recalled. “He’d hit 60 balls in a row at eight months.”
- The 10-finger grip started at a very young age
The very “unusual” fact about the newly crowned PGA Tour winner is that he uses the 10-finger (baseball-style) grip. He started using it from a very young age. Standard clubs were too heavy for his small hands, so he wrapped all ten fingers around the handle with no thumbs on the shaft. As he grew up, he put his thumbs on the club, but he refused to switch to a normal grip. What does he think about the interlock method? Well, he says it is “impossible” and that it “hurts his knuckles”.
- Wellesley roots run deep
Though he was born in Ohio and trained down in Florida, Wellesley, Massachusetts, is where Michael Thorbjornsen truly grew up. He moved there at five, sharpened his game on the fairways of Wellesley Country Club, and walked the halls of Wellesley High until graduating in 2020. Now that he’s taking on the PGA Tour, he hasn’t forgotten where he came from; as his family puts it, “there’s still Wellesley in our blood.”
- A modern-day Francis and Eddie
The hometown bond peaked at the 2022 U.S. Open in Brookline, right in his backyard. Instead of calling a veteran PGA Tour caddie, Thorbjornsen put his high school best friend, Drew Cohen, on the bag. The lore is that after checking in, the two Wellesley locals walked into the merchandise tent and bought matching gray “1913” shirts, a nod to local legend Francis Ouimet and his 10-year-old caddie, Eddie Lowery. They wore them right onto the course, writing a modern chapter of the area’s favorite underdog story on golf’s biggest stage.
- The man behind Thorbjornsen’s success
Thorbjornsen picked up a golf club young, and for most of his life he’s had just one coach: his father, Thorbjorn “Ted” Thorbjornsen. Ted has been his swing coach since the beginning, guiding him through the amateur ranks and into his pro career.
Just before the Rocket Classic, though, the 24-year-old made a change, bringing in renowned instructor Sean Foley. After the win, Thorbjornsen credited Foley with helping him get better control of the golf ball, and it clearly showed up in the results.
- An amateur standout
Thorbjornsen put together one of the most impressive amateur resumes of his generation. His resume took shape in 2018, when he won the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at Baltusrol, earning him a spot in the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. He made the cut there, becoming the first U.S. Junior Amateur champion to do so, and finished tied for 79th.
He also helped the United States win both the Junior Ryder Cup and the Junior Presidents Cup. His amateur career included seven titles in all, among them the 2023 Pac-12 Men’s Golf Championship, the 2021 Western Amateur, and the Massachusetts Amateur.
- Following Tiger’s footsteps straight to the Tour
Michael Thorbjornsen took the fast track out of Stanford, a school made famous by legends like Tiger Woods, Tom Watson, and Rose Zhang, and made his mark there as a standout on the men’s golf team. His No. 1 finish in the 2024 PGA Tour University rankings granted him full PGA Tour membership covering the rest of the 2024 season and all of 2025, bypassing Q-School and the Korn Ferry Tour altogether.
- The return that earned his first paycheck
Thorbjornsen made his professional debut at the 2024 Travelers Championship, returning to the event where he took fourth as an amateur in 2022 but had to forfeit the $406,700 payout under NCAA rules.
Turning pro allowed him to collect both prize money and accolades. After opening with a T-39 finish, he claimed runner-up honors at the John Deere Classic just three starts into his pro career. Moving into his first full PGA Tour season in 2025, he established himself among the Tour’s top five in driving distance through June and earned a T-41 finish at the 2025 PGA Championship.
- Rory McIlroy turns out to be a soothsayer
Rory McIlroy‘s words from last year have aged remarkably well after Michael Thorbjornsen’s breakthrough victory. The World No. 2 and six-time major champion admitted that staying at the top of the sport is becoming increasingly difficult, especially with young talents like Thorbjornsen making their mark on the PGA Tour.
“You see all these younger kids that are coming up, the likes of a Michael Thorbjornsen or Luke Clanton or these guys that basically are ready to play at the top level coming out of college, and you have to make sure you’re staying on top of what makes you such a great player,” McIlroy said at the 2025 Scottish Open.
- Two-year-long wait finally ends
Since turning professional, he has made roughly 65 official starts on the PGA Tour. Victory continued to elude him until he teed it up at Detroit Golf Club, where he finally captured his first PGA Tour title.
More interestingly, he became just the eighth player to win on the PGA Tour for the first time this season. He is also only the second consecutive first-time winner after 21-year-old Jackson Koivun stunned fans at TPC Twin Cities by defeating World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler to win the 3M Open. Last season, there were 17 first-time PGA Tour winners, just one shy of the record of 18 set in 2002.