Ricky Castillo’s practice at his local course, TPC Sawgrass, paid off as his win at the Puerto Rico Open sees him play there this week in The Players. <\/p>\n
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 For a lot of players on the PGA Tour, playing at TPC Sawgrass is a once-a-year thing. The same can\u2019t be said for Jacksonville resident Ricky Castillo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI usually play this course a decent amount when I\u2019m back in town,” Castillo said. “It\u2019s a great golf course just to practice, and you never know, just in case I was going to play in The Players.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it turns out, that practice wasn\u2019t for nothing. On Sunday, the former Florida Gators men’s golf standout won the Puerto Rico Open for his first PGA Tour title and a spot in his backyard tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was always a dream of mine to win, and to have that 6-foot putt to win the tournament is an awesome feeling I\u2019ll never forget,” Castillo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This will be Castillo\u2019s second start at The Players Championship. A year ago, he got in as an alternate. Safe to say it means a whole lot more this time around.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt [last year] was kind of just a last-minute thing. It was crazy,” Castillo said. “I just feel a lot better. I feel like I earned my spot this week, I didn\u2019t just end up getting in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old turned pro in 2023 after a career at Florida that saw him earn four-time All-SEC honors, three-time All-American recognition and help the Gators win the program\u2019s fifth national championship – all of it laying the platform for the success he\u2019s finding now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had some rough spots in college, where I mean it\u2019s definitely helped me a lot,” Castillo said. “Sometimes those difficult times can teach you more, so I definitely learned a lot from that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The win in Puerto Rico marked the 100th by a former Gator on the PGA Tour. Castillo said he\u2019s spoken with his former Florida head coach, J. C. Deacon, who hoped to make it to TPC Sawgrass to watch him play. Unfortunately, he\u2019s tied up with recruiting and trying to find the next Ricky Castillo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ricky Castillo’s practice at his local course, TPC Sawgrass, paid off as his win at the Puerto Rico…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-189363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}