ASHLAND — Tyler Sabo found himself, but not before getting lost in the rough.
A 2022 Ashand graduate and arguably the greatest golfer in the program’s storied history, Sabo is coming off a sensational redshirt sophomore season at Ohio State.
He played in all 12 events for the Buckeyes and finished in the top 20 six times.
Sabo placed a team-best seventh individually at the Big Ten Championship at Baltimore Country Club in late-April. He then put an exclamation point on the season with a 1-under 215 at the National Golf Invitational at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club in Maricopa, Ariz., in mid-May.
For the season, Sabo led the team with 15 rounds of par or better and 113 birdies.
“I had a really good last month-and-a-half, dating to our last home event in April. I played decent there and that built a lot of confidence,” Sabo said last week before the start of the Team Focus Celebrity Golf Tournament at Ashland Golf Club.
“It’s so much about confidence. If you don’t have confidence in your game it’s going to eat you alive.”
It wasn’t always fairways and greens for Sabo. He arrived in Columbus in the fall of 2022 as a three-time Division I All-Ohioan, but was redshirted.
“Red-shirting obviously wasn’t what I wanted to do, but someone out there has a better plan for me than I know of,” Sabo said. “My whole world revolved around golf and that kind of ate me up at the beginning of college.
“Everything I am as a person was tied to trying to make the team and I kind of lost a sense of my identity and who I was.”
It didn’t take Sabo long to recover.
As a redshirt freshman, Sabo competed in nine events with a 73.2 scoring average.
He shot a 1-under 71 at the Baton Rouge Regional, helping the Buckeyes reach the NCAA Championship.
Ohio State won its quarterfinal match over Vanderbilt and Sabo had a memorable hole-in-one on the par-3 eighth hole in his match against William Moll, the 15th-ranked amateur in the world at the time.
He halved the match against Moll and won his match against Auburn’s Josiah Gilbert in the semifinals.
That set the stage for his breakout redshirt sophomore season.
“Now I feel the most confident I’ve felt in a long time, which is pretty refreshing. It’s a refreshing feeling but it comes from a lot of mental work I’ve done,” Sabo said. “I’ve not made golf my identity and I think that’s the biggest part.”
The momentum built during the collegiate season has carried over into the summer.
Sabo shot even-par 72 at the 2025 U.S. Open Local Qualifier at Weymouth County Club in Medina to reach final qualifying. He carded a two-round 4-over 148 at Kinsale Golf and Fitness Club in Powell during final qualifying.
“I didn’t have my best, but I gave it my best effort and I feel like that is all I could do at that point,” Sabo said. “It was an amazing experience, especially playing with a PGA Tour professional that day. It was a really good learning experience to see your game is not that much different from theirs.
“It’s basically all mental. They just have complete trust and confidence in their game to do whatever they want to.”
While he may not have qualified for the U.S. Open, Sabo is still in the hunt for a berth in the prestigious 125th U.S. Amateur Championships at Olympic Club in San Francisco in mid-August.
He tied for fourth in the opening stage of qualifying and will take part in the second stage in late-July.
Previous U.S. Amateur champions include Jack Nicklaus, Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Bryson DeChambeau.
Sabo played in the Ohio Open earlier this week at Firestone Country Club in Akron. He shot even par for the three-round event, tying for 35th.
“After (the Ohio Open) I just got into a tournament called the Trans Mississippi Amateur. It’s part of the Elite Am Golf Series, which is basically a mini-tour for amateurs,” Sabo said. “It’s for the best amateurs in the world, so I’m pretty excited about that.
“After that I’ve got the Southern Amateur, which is part of that same Elite Am Golf Series, which is in Arkansas the third week of July.”
Every elite golfer’s goal is to play professionally. Sabo is no different, but he will no longer let success on the course define him.
“Scottie Scheffler talks about his faith. What I’ve done is made my faith my identity,” Sabo said. “I’m more than a golfer at the end of the day. If I don’t have a great round or great tournament, so what?
“I’ll move on to the next one. Golf is not who I am.”