PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – It was an opportunity to reflect, and these days that means checking the Snapchat archives.

When Collin Morikawa learned that he was playing the first two rounds of THE PLAYERS Championship with two peers who also turned pro last year, he consulted the social media app to see what he was doing this week last year. He saw his posts from a practice session at the Metropolitan Golf Links in Oakland, California. That’s where the training facility for the University of California men’s golf team is housed. Morikawa was having short-game contests with his teammates as they prepared for a tournament.

Now he’s preparing for another event, but he won’t be carrying his own bag or eating a box lunch in the middle of a 36-hole day. He’ll be playing for one of the most prestigious titles on the PGA TOUR. A lot has changed in the last year. The same can be said for playing partners Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff.

In June, those three players shared a stage at the Travelers Championship. They were declared as the next stars on the PGA TOUR. They’d all had impressive college careers, but similar declarations are made on an annual basis.

All three have lived up to the hype. As a result, they’ll share the Stadium Course’s first tee at 1:18 p.m. Thursday. They earned their spots in the year’s strongest field by winning shortly after turning pro.

“I know we’re going to have a bunch of smiles on our face, we’re going to go have fun and hopefully shoot some low scores,” Morikawa said.

They’ve done plenty of that already. Wolff won the 3M Open in his third pro start. Morikawa was runner-up but won three weeks later at the Barracuda Championship. And Hovland recently earned his TPC Sawgrass tee time by winning the Puerto Rico Open.

Add Joaquin Niemann and Sungjae Im to the list, and we’ve seen five players under the age of 23 win on TOUR since July. Seven players from that demographic won on TOUR in the preceding five seasons – and just four won from 1985-2000.

No one can remember a time when three players won so quickly after turning pro. Perhaps in the days of hickory shafts. So, the obvious question is whether this is a trend or just a coincidence, a confluence of talent that all turned pro at the same time.

“There’s hardly any need for an apprenticeship anymore. They hit the ground like veterans,” said Golf Channel commentator Brandel Chamblee. “I think having (a smartphone) is like having Butch Harmon or Harvey Penick in your pocket. You have access to the best teaching and a library of video. And I think social media is working as peer review for teachers. Now, if their ideas fail, they get called out on social media. It’s making instruction better. Now teaching is much more information-based. They know exactly how you create power. They guessed about it before.”

Today’s young players are following in the footsteps of not just Tiger Woods, but also Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth. Morikawa, Hovland and Wolff were all born after Woods turned pro. He showed the importance of physical fitness and made young players reconsider what’s possible. They also saw Spieth win on TOUR as a teenager, then watched Spieth and Thomas win majors and FedExCups before turning 25.