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Confidence and Hard Work have Set Up Sergio Jimenez for Success
1/22/2024 9:16 AM | Men's Golf
Freshman Feature: Sergio Jimenez
SALT LAKE CITY β Garrett Clegg has had the chance to coach a lot of student-athletes since taking over as the Utah men's golf head coach in May of 2016. He's seen golfers like Kyler Dunkle, Blake Tomlinson and Javier Barcos develop into a few of the best players in program history. For one of his newest pupils, freshman Sergio Jimenez, Clegg sees all the potential to reach those same heights. "I believe he's going to be an amazing golfer," said Clegg. "He's got everything inside of him to finish his career at the top of our record books."
A native of Madrid, Spain, Jimenez's time on the golf course started when he was almost too young to remember, but he still recalls his first time on the links and who it was with. "I started playing when I was four years old," he said. "I was watching my father and one of his friends and they were hitting balls. I remember trying to hit with a club taller than me."
That initial memory is one of many Jimenez has of being on the golf course with his father. So much of that time was spent trying to hone and fine tune Sergio's game. "I think [my father] is the most influential person," said Jimenez, "because I started playing golf for him and I keep playing golf because he's always paying attention to me. When I have something wrong, he'll say let's go to the coach or let's practice."
Jimenez's practice time has included work with coaches in his home country, who have helped him improve in areas such as adding distance to his drives, but even today, his father remains one of his most trusted teachers. "He had to stop playing golf years ago," said Jimenez, "I'm really happy that he can watch me play. For example, when I'll come to the facility to hit some balls, he'll ask me to call him so he can watch me when I'm training. He's always with me."
Jimenez's work with his coaches and his dad soon began to pay dividends on the golf course and the trophies started to pile up. In 2019, he took the top spot at the Spanish Open P&P, shooting 18-under. One year later, he was his home country's U16 champion, then the U18 winner in 2021. He also collected a silver medal at the European Young Master U16 Tournament and helped his team place fifth in the European Boys Team Championship. These accomplishments soon caught the eye of a certain coach in Salt Lake City.
"We knew he was one of the best players in Spain," said Clegg. "He was the top-ranked kid in his age and we knew he had really high-level results. A lot of his recruitment started during 2020-21 [and] we were still at a point where we couldn't travel. He's one of the very few players who I hadn't gotten to see in person when it came time to make an offer."
The opportunity to play college golf in America was something that always appealed to Jimenez and it didn't take long for him to warm to the idea of joining the Utes. "In Spain," he said, "all the people who play golf, our goal is to compete in college golf. We want to know how good we can be and which university we can play at. When I started talking to coach [Clegg], I didn't know anything about the university, but later when started I searching, I was really excited because this is a big school and its incredible to be here."
When Jimenez arrived on campus, Clegg, his staff and his student-athletes set about trying to make him feel at home in his new surroundings. "At our core, our golf program is a family," said Clegg. "When the international student-athletes arrive, we understand how hard it is to be so far from home and typically try and check on them a bit more. It is an extremely significant adjustment to attend college even for our local players. When you add moving to a whole new country, we instantly become the support system to help make our players comfortable."
For the Madrid native, there was an adjustment period to being so far from home, but his teammates helped him settle in to life at Utah. "Being here for three months, it's a little different from Spain," said Jimenez.Β "You're pretty far from your family, but I'm really close to my friends. We're having fun all the time [and] I can spend a lot of time doing what I like to. Also, I can go to the football games, which are really exciting. It's been incredible here."
As freshman on the squad, Clegg had areas of Jimenez's game he wanted to focus on improving, such as continuing to add distance to his drive and making him more patient on the course, but Utah's head man was very impressed by his golfer's drive and demeanor. "He's a great kid," said Clegg. "He wants to do well in school, wants to do well in golf. If you were to just step back and not tell him to do anything, he'd still do everything that needs to get done. For the first time in his life, school is 100% in English instead of Spanish and he got well over a 3.0. That's a fantastic job for a young man who is a non-native [English] speaker."
Jimenez's first semester on the golf course had positive and negative moments, as both player and coach acknowledged. "He had great moments, he had bad moments," said Clegg, "he had everything in between." "I started playing bad," said Jimenez. "I was making a lot of double and triple-bogeys, but now I think I have the key to how to play better and I'm excited to play next semester because I think we're going to do really well."
The fall ended on a high note, with Jimenez shooting 9-under at the Stockton Invitational, the best score on the team and good enough to claim 11th on the tournament leaderboard. Those results are part of what has Clegg convinced that his freshman from Spain will have the chance to become one of his program's most reliable contributors.
"I think his golf swing is stabilizing and improving," said Clegg. "One of his strengths is his confidence and self-belief. That confidence has helped him not only get into the starting five, but have some early success. That's part of what's going to make him really, really good."
Sergio Jimenez's ability to win championships was in evidence many times on golf courses in his home country. Now, at Utah, golfer and coach are aiming for similar success on the collegiate level and Jimenez has all the talent necessary to achieve that objective "He can handle big moments and he can handle tough situations," said Clegg. "He won big tournaments in Spain and he has a lot of confidence in himself. He's awesome and he's got a lot of ability and talent."
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