Growing up in southern Louisiana, there were a handful of kids about the same age who pushed each other to play their best at different tournaments. Four-time PGA TOUR winner Sam Burns was one. Same with Philip Barbaree, who was the No. 1 junior in the country at one point.

Jacob Bergeron was in the mix then, too. And after a runner-up result at the Live and Work in Maine Open, he’s now in the mix to earn his first PGA TOUR card.

“I’m definitely living what younger me looked forward to,” said Bergeron. “And that’s pretty cool.”

Bergeron, who grew up in Slidell, Louisiana, began playing tournament golf at age 7 on the heels of his father Wendell and older brother Nick. He played all sports as a youngster but tended to lean towards what the other men in his family did – his brother was part of their high school golf team – and then began battling Barbaree and Burns and others at age 11 or 12.

“All we wanted to do was beat each other’s brains out,” said Bergeron with a laugh. “But we were all from Louisiana and all playing the same tournaments … and then when I was 13 or 14, I realized I wanted to play on TOUR.

“A couple of years later I was like, ‘I want to be the best player in the world.’”

Bergeron would go on to play golf at Louisiana State before turning professional – but not like he had any choice in the matter. Being from southern Louisiana, he was destined to “come out of the womb bleeding purple and gold.” His town, he admits, is exactly what one might expect. People hunt and fish, and it’s not really a golf mecca.

“It’s what you’d expect for south Louisiana … but it’s home for me,” he said.

Bergeron is now inching closer to finding a home on the PGA TOUR after a solid summer stretch of golf on the Korn Ferry Tour.

His solo second in Maine came just a week after he finished tied for 23rd at the Wichita Open Benefitting KU Wichita Pediatrics – a result that got him the start in Maine.

In late May, Bergeron advanced through the Monday qualifier for the NV5 Invitational presented by Old National Bank. After finding the weekend – and rebounding from a third-round 76 with a Sunday 64 to finish T41 – he moved his way up the Priority Ranking and has begun to cobble together a solid schedule.

Bergeron currently sits 51st on the Regular Season Points List.

Starting with only conditional status for 2022, he has been thrilled to see that the results have been a product of some hard work and a mental tweak from earlier in the year.

“Having a solo second this late in the season shoots me up the Points ranking and definitely opens up some doors for me,” said Bergeron. “At the start of the year, even with conditional status, my goal was to try to find a way to turn that into a TOUR card, and I’m right on path to achieve that.”

Physically, he said, he made “tremendous” leaps and bounds with respect to consistency in his golf swing as soon as the calendar changed to 2022. Everything across the board has continued to improve.

“Earlier in the year, I wasn’t seeing results, but I just changed a couple of things up,” he explained. “Kind of a, ‘What do I have to lose?’ What I was doing then wasn’t working, so I changed up the business model a little bit.”

Bergeron said this year has accelerated his learning curve in professional golf. He’s climbing the ladder but building the ladder at the same time. Lessons from junior golf proved instructive in amateur and college golf, and knowledge and experience from LSU helped when he first turned pro and teed it up at mini-tour events.

This year he said he’s learned how to Monday qualify, compete on Thursday and Friday, and after the last couple of weekends, also learn how to be right there on Saturday and Sunday, too.

“The hole is still just 4.5 inches around. You have to find a number and hit it. It’s not that hard,” said Bergeron. “To see a low round on Sunday (at the NV5 Invitational) was validation that my ‘normal’ stuff was good enough to shoot low numbers at this level and a lightbulb went off.

“Once that light goes off and you see you results, you realize you can do this.”

Upon beginning the year with conditional Korn Ferry Tour status, Bergeron vowed to maintain a laser-like focus on getting a TOUR card by year’s end. He wrote down what he wanted, and he’s chasing it. After a sparkling week in Maine, his goal is very much within striking distance.

“It’s amazing how fast things can change,” said Bergeron. “Only in pro golf can you, in a way, change your life in a couple of weeks.”