Canada's Ashton McCulloch aims to make most of ultimate grad gift

As far as graduation gifts go, what Ashton McCulloch will get this week is pretty special.  

McCulloch, who is from Kingston, Ont., received a sponsor exemption into the Rocket Classic on the PGA Tour — a big surprise from his long-time coach at Michigan State University, Casey Lubahn, plus a former Michigan State athletic director (now tournament executive), Mark Hollis.  

McCulloch said his friends, family, and teammates were all there as he got the news earlier this month.  

“It was really special,” he told Sportsnet. “You can’t really ask for a better graduation gift than a PGA Tour start.”   

McCulloch is no stranger to the PGA Tour, however, having played the RBC Canadian Open the last two years. He also qualified for last year’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst.  

McCulloch won the Canadian Men’s Amateur in 2023, was named Big 10 Freshman of the Year (just the third in Michigan State history), and, at No. 27, is Canada’s highest-ranked male amateur.  

This summer also marks a comeback of sorts for McCulloch, as his start at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley was a return to competition after suffering a wrist injury.  

He learned, in January, he had a broken bone and torn ligament and was in a cast for more than two months. Due to the timing of the injury, McCulloch lost his final-year campaign with Michigan State. He will return in September as a red-shirt senior.  

McCulloch already earned his degree in engineering but will still need to take a few classes in order to play on the golf team in 2025-26, per NCAA rules.  

That’s good news for Michigan State, as McCulloch is considered one of the best golfers in school history — he holds the best single-season scoring average record and the best career scoring average.  

“It feels awesome just to be playing golf again pain-free,” McCulloch said. “It wasn’t great timing but now I feel really good, and I can’t ask for much more than that.” 

McCulloch has never played Detroit Golf Club, the host of this week’s Rocket Classic, but knows it as a country-club style course — the kind of layout that fits his game. He grew up in Kingston playing out of Cataraqui Golf and Country Club, which was designed almost 100 years ago. Detroit Golf Club was opened around the same time.   

McCulloch said, as far as success goes this week, it’s hard to set goals with respect to scores or positions on the leaderboard (“That’s just not how golf works. Some weeks you have it, some weeks you don’t”) but he said that with each PGA Tour start he’s got, he feels like he’s closer and closer to feeling like himself inside the ropes.  

McCulloch said he’s been awfully impressed with how his putting has improved this year. It was never a strength of his, he admitted, and pointed out he finished last or next-to-last in putting in his previous starts on the PGA Tour. But since that was one of the only things he could work on through his injury, he’s gotten better by leaps and bounds. In the second round of this year’s Canadian Open, for example, he was 14th in the field of 156 in strokes gained: putting.  

“I don’t need to do anything too crazy special (to have success). A big goal for me is to gain a little bit of confidence and comfort with being out there with the best players in the world,” he said. “As good as they are, hopefully it doesn’t take anything special for me to be there and be in the hunt.”  

Come Thursday, McCulloch is certainly hopeful this is the graduation gift that keeps on giving.  

“I’m excited and really looking forward to this week,” he said.  

Ben Silverman, Adam Svensson and Adam Hadwin, who lost in a playoff in 2023 at the Rocket Classic, are the other Canadians in the field.  

Cam Davis won the event in 2024 by a shot, his second Rocket Classic title, after Akshay Bhatia three-putted the final hole of the tournament.