Aaron Cockerill has played professional golf since 2015, but until recently many Canadians wouldn’t know the golfer from Winnipeg, Man. After all, Cockerill was never tipped as the next big thing.
“You never know what brings success,” Cockerill said at the RBC Canadian Open, where he was making his debut on the PGA Tour and finished T48, with a final round of 69. “I’ve played with guys who are really, really talented and you don’t see them anymore. I have found my way to do it. I’m longer now than I was before—I’ve picked up some distance. And I’ve always had a good short game. I’m getting closer and closer.”
Cockerill’s also has a connection to Golf Town, having worked during high school before heading to the University of Idaho and then Texas A&M for college. “It was great,” said Cockerill. “It allowed me to be around the game during some long winters while in high school.”
For Cockerill, the path to success was meandering. After all, does a golfer who lists himself as “frequent flyer, professional walker and receipt collector,” on his Twitter bio sound like someone making buckets of money as one of the elite golfers in the world? But the truth is, maybe more now than ever, Cockerill, from Stony Mountain just outside Winnipeg, is one of the world’s best. Playing through the messy world of the pandemic, Cockerill now sits at No. 315 in the world, which is solid considering in 2018 he was closer to 2,000. And while he might make headlines in his home country for reasons he’d rather not—more on that later—lately he’s getting attention for his golf, even if it is in places half a world away from his Manitoba hometown.
“I think my path forward is about work ethic and sticking to it,” he says. “I want to be a better version of myself. I was never a great junior or college player. It is a slow and steady advance through my career as a pro.”
To pursue his goal, Cockerill turned to the DP World Tour, previously the European Tour, to move forward, an unusual path for Canadian pros who typically play in North America. He’s had success—finishing in tie for third at the ISPS Handa Championship in Spain and second in Kenya earlier this year. That will give Cockerill great status for the next full season of the European Tour. But it is a tough road to travel—with long flights to and from his Winnipeg home.
“I think if I did it for a number of years more the travel would wear you out,” says Cockerill, 30. “I’m used to eight-hour flights out of Winnipeg. I go to Toronto and then head wherever. But if I can plan a schedule and go out for four weeks and then come home, I can make it work.”
It doesn’t always work—when the latest COVID variant appeared last year, Cockerill was in 12th position in an tournament in South Africa when the world suddenly closed down, leaving him searching for a way home. Eventually he and his wife reached out via Twitter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hoping to find a way back to Winnipeg.
“Out of all the times I’ve said something on Twitter, usually something comes out of it,” he says. “I lost my Trackman in the airport in Vancouver, I emailed and nothing came of it so I jokingly sent them a Tweet. And I got my Trackman back. In this instance it took me four days to get home.”
What’s next? While Cockerill would love to be playing in North America, he’s comfortable battling it out in Europe—at least for the time being. “If I can get my way into the Korn Ferry Playoffs, I would certainly think about it, but I’m not going through the Korn Ferry qualifying if I have good status in Europe,” he says. “For now I’m playing well over there and perhaps I can play my way back [to North America.]”