Thor Drops the Hammer

Wow. Wow. Wow. When I got into golf, there was a kid I stumbled onto on YouTube. His name was Karl Vilips. I followed Karl’s junior career, to college, and now on the PGA TOUR. Just before Karl started college at Stanford, he caddied for one of his best friends and future teammates at the 2020 U.S. Amateur, Michael Thorbjornsen. While he would ultimately fall in the quarterfinals of the championship, he had gained a new fan.

Fast forward a year, I had just gotten to Madison and was invited to a party at AEPi’s lake house, and I looked up towards the house, and who was standing there but Michael Thorbjornsen. Now that we are both over 21, I can say that he had quite a few drinks and ended up drunkenly talking for an hour – turns out his best friend (and future caddie) Drew was a brother (H/T to Drew for bringing him). Two years later, at the U.S. Open at LACC, I ran into Michael again, and again we talked for a while.

Michael had a prodigious amateur career: 2016 Drive, Chip & Putt champion; 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur Champion; first Junior Am winner to make the cut in the U.S. Open; 2022 Western Amateur Champion; 2022 Massachusetts Amateur Champion; 2023 Pac-12 Golf Champion; and the highest-ranked player in the 2024 PGA TOUR University standings. In 2022, he also finished 4th at the Travelers Championship – a stalwart PGA TOUR event.

However, his professional career did not start as quickly as many expected. But today, that all changed. Michael Thorbjornsen fired a 63 (-7) – including a chip-in birdie on the 12th hole. And on 18, Thor dropped the hammer with a 26-foot birdie putt to win the final Rocket Classic at Detroit Country Club. 

He has come close before: a runner-up in his third professional start at the 2024 John Deere Classic, another runner-up in Puerto Rico last year, and briefly held the lead in the final round of the 2026 WM Phoenix Open. But now, close but no cigar is out the window: Michael Thorbjornsen is a PGA TOUR winner!