RecruitPKB was founded in 2012 as a partnership of the PKBGT and Brandi Jackson Golf. Brandi is the national authority on girls golf recruitment and provides unique insight for PKBGT members with her background as a strong junior player, All-American collegian, professional player on the LPGA & Futures tours and experiences in the recruiting consulting and coaching space. Brandi speaks monthly at a PKBGT event, provides a free 30-min consultation to all PKBGT members and offers consultation packages to help families looking for more assistance. The RecruitPKB platform will provide valuable content to help juniors and families navigate the college recruiting process.
Brandi Jackson Golf was founded in April 2011 by former LPGA and Symetra Tour player Brandi Jackson. Brandi has consulted, educated and evaluated thousands of competitive junior golfers through her programs, partnerships, speaking events, camps, workshops, and online program.
Brandi was an All-American, SoCon Champion, SoCon Player of the Year and NCAA East Regional Champion while at Furman University and has since been inducted into the Furman Athletic Hall of Fame. Outside of her Furman career, she won the South Carolina Women’s Match Play Championship in 1999 and 2000 and was chosen as the Carolina’s Golf Association Player of the Year. Her most memorable experience as an amateur was finishing Runner Up at the 2002 US Women’s Amateur.
Brandi graduated from Furman with a degree in Health and Exercise Science in 2003 and had the opportunity to play in the 2003 US Women’s Open as an amatuer. That Fall, she competed in the LPGA Qualifying School where she earned full LPGA status for the 2004 season. She continued to compete on both the LPGA and Symetra Tours for 7 more years, playing in two more US Women’s Open in 2006 and 2007 as a professional.
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In 2009, Brandi was hired by a national college recruiting company as a Recruiting Expert Speaker. In addition to still competing on tour, she also traveled across the country to speak at high schools and golf tournaments about the college recruiting process. In 2010, she took on an additional position as the Head Golf Recruiting Coach to work with the 600+ golf recruits enrolled in programs.
Upon realizing how much the players and parents could benefit from more personalized attention, she decided to start her own consulting company in May 2011 called Brandi Jackson Golf. For the last 7 years, Brandi has worked directly with families to consult them throughout the college recruiting process, providing guidance on all aspects of college recruiting, player development and personal growth.
Brandi has served as the PKBGT’s College Consultant for the past 5 years and she serves on the Board of Directors for The Blade Junior Golf Classic, a top junior golf tournament for South Carolina players. She was voted as Greenville Business Magazine’s Best and Brightest under 35 and the Anderson Independent Top 20 under 40 Leaders. She was recently a guest on the Golf Channel’s Morning Drive during Junior Golf Week. Brandi also serves on the SCJGA Junior Golf Committee and is a TPI Level 1 Expert. In 2012, she was inducted into the Palmetto High School Hall of Fame for her accomplishments in volleyball, basketball and golf and she is a volunteer Big Sister to a 15 year old young lady.
This greatly varies based on a player’s resume and expectations but generally for a female golfer once you are consistently shooting under 80 from 5800yds and longer you can begin the recruting process. If this doesn’t happen before spring of junior year then it is imperative that you begin the process no matter what and stay as realistic as possible. It is never too early to begin the process but this is a general reference point for the resume that a coach would consider prior to a player’s junior year.
An course assessment of a player’s current level of play with respect to college recruiting potential and their ability and willingness to improve and play at the collegiate level. The consultation portion of the evaluation will help a family better understand where the player currently stands in the recruiting process, discuss their expectations for the future and provide directions on how they should begin to tackle the process most successfully.
No, I am not a recruiting service. I serve to consult, coach and mentor a junior golfer on how they can tackle the process within the realm of what the college coaches expect from the players.
A recruiting resume can be created in several different formats, a PDF/Word document, paid online golf resume service, free online website creator or paid domain registered website. Any of these options are equally acceptable as long as they are easily accessed, organized and minimized to the necessary info.
No, I do provide direction and options on how a player can best create a resume that is easily accessible to the college coaches and do a follow up review once it is completed. Through the evaluation process, I film 15-20 video clips to edit and create a quality recruiting video for each player to use with their resume.
No, I do not teach any swing instruction. My role is to ensure a junior golfer is in good hands with an instructor who understands the competitive junior golf world and has an awareness of the college recruiting process. For some players I do provide coaching and suggestions on short game fundamentals, course management skills, and practice drills based on my experience of playing collegiate and professional golf.
Yes, throughout my junior, collegiate and professional golf career, plus 8+ years of working in the college recruiting industry I have worked hard to develop relationships with college coaches all over the country. I do not take these relationships for granted and strive to maintain respect from the coaches on how I consult each player through their college recruiting journey.
While the belief that there is an abudance of unused scholarships is a bit misleading, it is still a great opportunity for a girl to earn athletic scholarship money. Not all golf programs are fully funded with the allowed NCAA scholarships so they funding is more limited than what most players and parents anticipate. And across the board it is much more competitive for the scholarship money than most girls realize beacuse they are competing against girls from not just in the US but internationally as well.
An official visit is not allowed until first day of a athlete’s senior year but expenses can be covered including food, lodging and entertainment. An athlete is only allowed 5 total official visits and only 1 per instituion. An unofficial visit is allowed anytime during the process but no expenses are allowed to be covered by the institution, only 3 complimentary tickets to an athletic event. An athlete may take as many unofficial visits as they would like.
A junior golfer can send emails and make phone calls on their own initiative prior to Sept 1st and include their swing or high school coaches contact info. While a college coach can not initiate email or phone communication with a player before Sept 1 of their junior year, they are allowed to contact a player’s swing or high school coach to schedule an unofficial visit.
Our PKB experience was extraordinary!! We met Brandi Jackson at a recruitment seminar at a Furman University tournament. Brandi came highly recommended. She was well known not only for her contacts and knowledge of the recruiting process but for her skill level of the game. Brandi knows a lot about what it takes to be successful. After just 2 sessions with Brandi my daughter said, ‘Mom, I which I had known Brandi years ago. She is so helpful, patient, and resourceful. She really knows the skills I need to improve on. Brandi has not only made a difference in our daughter’s game but in her confidence level as a person and a player.
PKB has been a true partnership with our family: Answering our questions, matching our daughter’s skill level to the correct University, and coaching us through the recruitment process. Brandi and the PKB organization were invaluable to us and we are very thankful.
As parents of a PKB player Rhea Bhatia we are proud that she Committed to Queens University Charlotte. Rhea could have not achieved this milestone without Brandi Jackson and PKBGT. ‘Thanks Brandi’.
We had our first meetings with Brandi way back in fall of 2015 and she has been an invaluable addition to the ‘team’ supporting our daughter Muskan in pursuing her dream of playing high-level collegiate golf. Having moved from India only a few years back, we were very new to the sports recruitment process in US. Brandi has helped and guided us through every step of this journey with knowledge borne out of her personal experience as a collegiate and professional golfer.
We really like how Brandi sits down with every athlete and family to understand what they are looking for specifically from a college experience and then prepare an honest list of schools that they should be looking for and lists their pros and cons. She is genuinely interested in helping the player find a place in this competitive field of collegiate golf. Muskan had her resume already ready but Brandi helped her improve it even further and created a great swing video for her too. Brandi also provided Muskan great insights into what to expect out of college visits and how to go about making them successful. We found all our sessions with Brandi extremely informative and have referred several families to Brandi, as our experience has been so fruitful.
Muskan also played a couple of practice rounds with Brandi for some big tournaments and learnt a great deal from her as regards to course management. It was very easy for us to schedule meetings with Brandi and we could turn to her anytime for any question that came to our mind while Muskan was short listing her dream schools and then finally selecting University of Richmond as her future home.
We are very thankful to Brandi for all that she has done for Muskan and what she does every day to promote junior golf.Puneet and Abhilasha Uppal, daughter Muskan Uppal ,19 who has verbally committed to University of Richmond.
Working with Brandi the last couple of years both on recruiting and individually on game improvement has been invaluable for my daughter. She has been professional, informative, and has provided just the right amount of optimism and realism for my daughter. She has truly made this stressful process less intimidating and provided great guidance in terms of the process, interacting with coaches and selecting schools to focus on. I am convinced we were able to successfully navigate this process largely due to her help and would highly recommend any family wishing for their daughter to play college golf to definitely work with her! Renaldo (Alexis) Jarrell.
RecruitPKB: Stats and Data Coaches Want to See
Over the next few weeks, I am going to share some coach responses from a recent survey I did to ask coaches their opinions. Please remember that coaches look for different things and have varying opinions, but I tried to [...]
RecruitPKB: Red Flags in the Process
Over the next few weeks, I am going to share some coach responses from a recent survey I did to ask coaches their opinions. Please remember that coaches look for different things and have varying opinions, but I tried to [...]
RecruitPKB: Coach Communication Etiquette Tips
A few quick tips for improving your coach communications etiquette Email Etiquette: Always address the coach specifically and have a greeting to start the email Check your grammar and spelling Make sure you attach any documents Have an appropriate email [...]
RecruitPKB: 13 Years of Brandi Jackson Golf
This past week I celebrated 13 years since I launched Brandi Jackson Golf. I took some time to share why I decided to launch this business.... The truth is I had no plans to ever do anything besides play professional [...]
RecruitPKB: Practice with a Purpose
“Always have quality practices. Don't just beat balls. Staying on the range all day does you no good if nothing is accomplished.” - Division 2 Women's Coach Learning to practice with a purpose is a skill most junior golfers don't [...]
RecruitPKB: A Look at DI Collegiate Averages
While this process has a great deal of subjectivity to it, I've come to appreciate data and numbers more over the years. This is a chart compiled of the average scores for the top 5 individuals from a mix of [...]
RecruitPKB: How to say I am not interested
I've had this question asked several times by players over the years, "how do I tell a coach that I am not interested?". This may be a question you face at different stages of communication with a coach so I [...]
RecruitPKB: Recruiting Green Flag #2
Showing your interest in the program you are contacting is a definite green flag in the process. This is certainly easier at some programs if you have grown up as a fan of that particular school/program as opposed to just [...]
RecruitPKB: Recruiting Green Flag #1
Your willingness to include scores (good and bad) on your resume and emails is a huge green flag. Coaches LOVE to see scores and they LOVE transparency, honesty, and when you make things EASY for them! If you only tell [...]