Meet Emiliano Grillo: The IMG Academy Phenom Contending for the PGA Championship

It’s rarely a good idea to begin anything in written form with an informal apology, but in the case of rising wunderkind Emiliano Grillo, it’s absolutely warranted.

Grillo, the latest in an impressive line of dauntless young players on the PGA Tour, enters the third round of the PGA Championship on Sunday in the penultimate group and two shots off the lead, despite the fact that he’s playing in only his fifth major.

Another fresh face who has rushed up the game’s pecking order like mercury in a sizzling summer thermometer, not much is broadly known about the Argentine, 23, a rookie on the U.S. tour in 2015-16. Since we aim to educate, here’s a fact that will stick in your head.

His wife’s name is Macarena.

With apologies for planting the melody from that infectiously annoying, 21-year-old ditty in anybody’s head, it would hardly be a shock if Grillo secures a spot in the game’s collective memory this week, too.

He’s no oldie, though. One of the fastest-rising players on the planet at world No. 37, Grillo has been on a career trajectory that seemed pointed toward a big-stage bow all along. Sooner, not later.

“His career has just sort of skyrocketed,” said David Leadbetter, one of the sport’s most established swing gurus. “It’s been an impressively steep incline.”

This week, after rounds of 66 and 67, he’ll start the rain-delayed third round on Sunday at Baltusrol Golf Club—weather permitting—alongside defending champion Jason Day and two shots behind co-leaders Jimmy Walker and Robert Streb.

Like many his age, Grillo wasted little time in carving a place for himself in the pantheon of notable young guns, winning his first start as a PGA Tour member, the Frys.com Open in October. He’s part of the high school class of 2011, which includes superstar Jordan Spieth, world No. 38 Daniel Berger and No. 40 Justin Thomas.

Unlike his American peers, Grillo took a more circuitous route to the top in the States, enrolling at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, as a teenager and leaving Argentina behind. He still lives in Bradenton, which is where Leadbetter, who runs the IMG Academy’s golf division, first ran across him.

“He’s always had an amazing amount of talent,” Leadbetter said by phone from England. “He’s a very creative player, spontaneous, an Argentinean player through and through. He’s a real shot-maker.”

That notion was seconded by none other than Spieth last month at the Memorial Tournament, where Grillo made a run at his second tour title before fading.

“He has one of the best golf swings, best strikers of the golf ball, I've ever seen, one of the best ball flights,” Spieth told reporters. “He has since he was 14, 15 years old. He's a good friend. He's a lot of fun to be around.”

He’d be even more fun to hang out with this week, especially between the ropes, since he’s playing in the last two groups at the season’s final major. Grillo doesn't seem to be overwhelmed by his first real look at a major title.

“My game is right there,” he told reporters after the second round. “Going to be an interesting weekend. I've never been in this situation, and I'm not afraid of it. I'm going to go out and enjoy it.”

For a time on Friday, he even held the outright lead after a blistering stretch of three birdies in four holes. 

Winning would hardly be an implausible next step. While Spieth, Thomas and Berger went off to college, Grillo turned pro at 19 and quickly earned a card on the European Tour via Qualifying School. Even by today’s standards, he got to the top in a rush.

His first professional win came in Argentina in 2014, and his success helped secure a sponsor’s exemption last year into the PGA Tour’s Puerto Rico Open, where he lost in a five-man playoff. Yet he earned enough non-member money on the U.S. tour to take a crack at securing his PGA Tour card via the developmental Web.com Series Finals in October, where he put together two top-10 finishes and a victory in the finale of the four-tournament lineup to lock up his big league status for 2015-16.

Two weeks later, in Napa, California, he won his first start as a PGA Tour member. That’s not so much of an introduction as it is an outright rocket launch.

Eric Risberg/Associated Press

“He’s one of those players who had that intangible something about them,” Leadbetter recalled. “He was always very, very confident.”

Now we know why.

The rest of his rookie year has been punctuated by periods of mundane play, though he finished tied for 11th at the Memorial, tied for 14th at the star-laden Bridgestone Invitational and tied for 12th at The Open Championship over the past eight weeks.

Grillo has made 10 birdies against only three bogeys in the first two rounds. If Grillo's putter remains hot—it’s the weakest part of his game, as he ranks 138th in strokes gained from putting—then he could join countrymen Roberto De Vicenzo and Angel Cabrera as a major champion.

Win or lose, he’s climbed yet another fast step up the occupational ladder. When asked if his win in Napa might translate into something bigger this week in New Jersey, he suggested it could.

“A win is a win and it's hard to learn to win,” he told reporters. “Some people have it, some people don't. I think I've learned to it.”

Steve Elling covers golf for Bleacher Report. You can follow him at @EllingYelling. All quotes are firsthand unless otherwise noted.