Soft-spoken Shelton built for PGA TOUR

Robby Shelton was quite literally built by ‘Bama.

Born in Wilmer – a town of less than 1,000 people – outside Mobile, Alabama, Shelton held a club for the first time at age 4.

A decade later, as a young teenager, he took down a kid named Jordan Spieth at the U.S. Junior Amateur and caught the eyes of college coaches across the country.

A decade after that, at 24, he has earned a PGA TOUR card for the first time thanks to two wins on the 2019 Korn Ferry Tour. He holds the No. 3 spot on the season-long Points List entering the season-ending Korn Ferry Tour Championship presented by United Leasing & Finance.

His whole life has been golf. He studied hard, sure, but the plan was always to play golf for a living.

He hasn’t left Alabama behind, though. He calls Birmingham home now, as he carries the support of his school, community and hometown to his next stop: the PGA TOUR.

“Any time you see an eighth-grader shoot 67 you think, ‘Oh, that’s pretty good.’”

Coach Jay Seawell, the longtime leader of the Alabama Crimson Tide’s golf team, has seen golf greatness up close, especially recently.

Seawell was at the helm of the national championship-winning squad in 2013 that featured (to name just one star) eventual FedExCup winner Justin Thomas. But his first impression of a young Robby Shelton was something he’ll never forget.

Shelton was 13 and in eighth grade. He shot 67. The day featured a ‘scrappy’ 36 on the front nine, before something clicked, and Shelton shot 31 on the back nine.

“He had (accomplished) some things as a real young kid, but it’s not bad the first time you watch a kid play and he shoots 67,” says Seawell. “He’s been that kind of player ever since.”

Seawell kept a close eye on Shelton through his teenage years – which featured that victory over Spieth at the U.S. Junior plus many other accomplishments on the pre-college laundry list – and finally brought him to the school for a formal visit.

But it didn’t quite go the way he had hoped.

Shelton, being from such a small town, is, he admits, a homebody. The school was likely getting the inside track since he would be so close to home, but Seawell brought Shelton to the Alabama-LSU football game as part of his visit (“the big recruits go to the big games”). This particular game would be dubbed, at its conclusion, ‘The Game of the Century’ – with LSU topping Alabama, 9-6.

“That was probably the worst kind of visit because the Alabama/LSU weekend is a zoo. It’s a circus,” says Seawell now, with a laugh, as he remembered there being more than 250,000 people tailgating and 100,000 people inside the stadium itself for the game.

“It’s a beautiful thing, but there are a lot of people. Robby is from a really small town and is a quiet kid, so it probably was like we overwhelmed him.”

That didn’t impact Shelton’s impression of the school or the team, as he committed not long after. He wanted to play against the best, despite the fact that Shelton could have gone anywhere for school.

“We were close enough to home. We were the defending national champions. He didn’t know that then, but we were the No.1-ranked team in the country,” says Seawell. “At the time, Justin Thomas was a sophomore and we always thought he’d stay to the third year. Justin’s sophomore year was Robby’s recruiting year, and we said, ‘You’re going to get a chance to compete against the best.’ And that’s important to Robby. He believes in his ability and he doesn’t shy away from a challenge.”

Shelton says the combination of being so close to home along with knowing pretty much everyone on the team already was the real reason for him choosing the Crimson Tide. He had already crossed paths with Thomas, along with Trey Mullinax, Tom Lovelady, Bobby Wyatt and more.

He says coming to a strong team to try to win a national championship was key, and how close the team became was something he couldn’t have predicted.

Seawell, Shelton says, would work out in the gym with the team. He was fighting right there beside guys who were half his age, doing the ‘crazy’ stuff the trainer had the players do, which resulted in the squad becoming like a family.

“They’re my boys,” says Shelton.

“He’s scary good when he’s clicking on all cylinders.”

Shelton’s list of accomplishments from when he was a freshman on the Alabama golf team’s website is nearly 700 words long.

The team won the national championship that year with Shelton leading the charge.

He’d go on to become part of the Palmer Cup team in 2014 and 2015, and he’d play on the 2015 Walker Cup team after qualifying for the 2014 U.S. Open. As the highest-ranked amateur golfer in the state of Alabama, he earned a spot in the PGA TOUR’s 2015 Barbasol Championship, where he’d go on to finish tied for third – the best result by an amateur on the PGA TOUR since Phil Mickelson won the 1991 Northern Telecom Open.

Shelton would turn professional after his junior season in 2016. He tried to earn a spot on the PGA TOUR via sponsor’s exemptions that summer, but he fell short, making two of four cuts with a top finish of T27 at the John Deere Classic.

“I knew coming out of college that getting my card on starts was going to be super difficult … only a few people had ever done it. I didn’t let that get me down,” says Shelton. “I knew there were other paths and I knew it was going to take a little longer. I’m a pretty patient guy so I didn’t let that discourage me. I knew I would get there at some point.”

The extra year of waiting to get to the biggest stage in golf, Seawell says, was actually a key learning experience for Shelton – who was still so young.

“Through all the things he’s been through and for having to wait a year, maybe longer than people thought … it made him have to work and dig deeper and learn more,” says Seawell, “and it might have created a deeper appreciation of the opportunity he’s got.”

Shelton took full advantage of his time on the 2017 Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada, running through a summer schedule that saw him finish 1-2-CUT-T5-T4-T2-9 at one point.

He put an exclamation point on his year by shooting a 10-under-par 60 in the final round of his season.

That, according to college teammate and fellow Korn Ferry Tour member Davis Riley, was not surprising.

“When he has a bit of momentum, he runs with it,” says Riley, who has roomed with Shelton a handful of times on the road this year, as he’s getting his own pro career started.

“He just putts the eyes out of it. When he sees one go in, they all go in. When he’s on, he has a flawless game. He hits it straight. Hits his irons good. And he makes a lot of putts.”

That’ll work.

“I think his game sets up better for the PGA TOUR than the Korn Ferry Tour.”

Riley decided to saddle up next to Shelton during his first year at Alabama because he knew Shelton was the guy who was focused on what he needed to do to get better. He was doing all the little things right, Riley says.

That has continued into Riley’s pro career, he says. Although Shelton is one of the quieter guys on Tour, when he gets to know someone, he’ll open right up.

“I’m one of his good friends, and I can’t get him to shut up when I’m with him,” Riley says with a laugh. “Once you get to know him, you get to be boys with him, he opens up. He has really been a big help for me this first year (on the Korn Ferry Tour) and that’s just the kind of guy he is.”

Seawell, too, says Shelton has always had a quiet confidence about him.

He was a sponge during his first year at Alabama, and when he would ask questions, he’d do it when no one else was around. If there were private moments, that’s when he’d start to ask the questions that would make him get just that much better.

“He always would pick your brain with little small quiet questions during quiet moments,” says Seawell. “He’s never been a big bravado kind of guy.”

Shelton let his clubs do the talking instead, and after leaving school, he had his run on the Mackenzie Tour before having a solid, if unspectacular, rookie Korn Ferry Tour campaign – he finished 67th on The 25 and had two top-10 finishes, but missed the final five cuts of the Regular Season.

He put together a solid team for 2019, he says, and the results have paid dividends.

He got a new caddie at the beginning of 2019 on the suggestion of Michael Johnson (who went to Auburn but lives in Birmingham near Shelton) and began working with Thomas Twitty, a personal trainer in Birmingham. The work he’s done with Twitty, Shelton says, has been a game-changer.

“Honestly he’s been the biggest part of this year,” says Shelton. “Everything is finally happening and I’m finally feeling really good week-in and week-out, and there’s just nothing to worry about.

“The group around me right now is amazing. We all believe in what I’m doing, and I believe in those guys. It’s nice to have. I just haven’t had that security for the past three years. It’s really cool.”

Shelton continues to see Seawell on occasion when he’s home, since their connection is so strong – and Seawell is a pretty good short-game coach, too.

The way Seawell taught him to manage a golf course, even if Shelton didn’t have his ‘A’ game, remains something he uses every day.

Shelton may be long done with college, but the Alabama connections are still as solid as ever, as he readies to start his PGA TOUR career this fall.

“I’m just super excited about getting to play against the best in the world when I’m playing my best,” says Shelton. “I’m finally there and I can see it. It’s going to be fun.”

And the Tide rolls on.