I am not sure who I am agreeing with or disagreeing with, but here is how I see it. Things have become very specialized these days and TH is correct that it helps very much to have money and travel to tournaments and things like that. At the same time, in football you need to know if you can tackle and run and throw against the other guys, same with basketball and the others sports. In golf, if you grow up on Bethpage Black and are breaking 70 consistently, why do you need to prove it against the other juniors around the world? Would it help? Maybe, but if you can play, you can play. I am not a fan of his, to say the least, but Frank Lickliter never traveled to any of the bigger national tournaments and he got a local scholarship and then went out on Tour. It can happen.
Golf is like kicking field-goals, nobody can stop you if you are good at it.