EDITOR'S NOTE: The Kennesaw State Department of Athletics will induct five new members into its Hall of Fame this fall at a ceremony on Friday, Nov. 6 at NorthStar Church in Kennesaw. The inductees will also be recognized during the Saturday, Nov. 7 KSU football contest against Delaware at Walens Family Field at Fifth Third Stadium.

Doors will open at 5:30 p.m., providing guests an opportunity to mingle before dinner begins at 6:15 p.m. The induction ceremony is scheduled to begin at 7:10 p.m. Tickets for the Hall of Fame dinner are available for $90 individually or $600 for a table.
 
KSUOwls.com will profile each inductee leading up to the ceremony. We now explore Jeff Karlsson's story.
 

If one went looking for 17-year-old Jeff Karlsson on a summer day, he would not be found recreating on the rocky coastline or steel-blue lakes of his native Sweden. 

Instead, Karlsson’s summer days were filled with golfing, often late into the sunlit Nordic night. 

While the frigid damp of a Scandinavian winter sends many Swedes skating and skiing, Karlsson’s teenage winter days were altered only slightly by Mother Nature’s northern climes. 

The hitting bay at his local golf club provided Karlsson with a place to grow his game year-round, even if it meant collecting frozen golf balls in a bucket and bringing them home to thaw for the next day’s swings.

Making the turn at twilight and scraping up ice-encased golf balls – these were the moments that carried Karlsson from a novice teen golfer in Sweden to All-American honors at Kennesaw State, a PGA Tour event at Torrey Pines and an investment banking career in New York City. 

Moments like these now have Karlsson returning to KSU, this time as a Hall of Famer. 

“This is not really something I had thought about at all,” Karlsson said of earning Hall of Fame recognition at KSU. “It is a great honor, and it brings back a lot of fond memories of team and individual successes we had.”

Hitting a Bucket

Before leaving his legacy as the Owls’ most prolific golfer, before ever discovering the game, Karlsson grew up playing soccer, mountain biking and exploring the forests of Sweden’s southwest. 

Karlsson’s home of Nol is a small town nestled not far from the banks of the G?ta River as it tumbles from Lake Vänern into the North Sea.

Golf wasn’t prominent in the Karlsson family, so it took an introduction from his soccer teammate, Patrick Ronegard, before the future Owl found his new passion. 

“One day after practice, Patrick asked if I would like to go ‘hit a bucket,’ Karlsson recalled. “I had no idea what he was talking about; I’d never gone to a golf course before.”

All it took was a few swings of an 8 iron, and Karlsson knew he was onto something. 

“I remember hitting a good shot, and it was just the best feeling ever,” Karlsson said. “I was immediately hooked.”

Karlsson signed up for junior golf lessons at Ale Golf Klub and soon had the support of his first golf mentor in the club’s head pro, Henning Lundstrom. 

“He was a very good teacher, an all-around great person, and he took an interest in me early on,” Karlsson said. “He saw how enthusiastic I was about it and really helped me get better in those early years.”

On summer mornings, Lundstrom would pick up Karlsson on his way to the course at 6 a.m. Several rounds later, Karlsson’s parents would pick him up from the course at 10 or 11 p.m.

“For three summers I basically lived on the golf course,” Karlsson remembered. “There were a lot of good golfers out there that I really looked up to and still do.”

It wasn’t long before Karlsson wasn’t just looking up to the other players at Ale Golf Klub but competing with them. 

Though still relatively new to the game, Karlsson was selected to play with Ale Golf Klub in an annual Swedish national tournament featuring teams from each of the country’s golf clubs. 

As Karlsson began seeing more success in tournaments and earning a ranking on the Swedish Junior Tour, Lundstrom began urging him to pursue American collegiate golf. 

After arriving on the radar of coaches in the U.S., Karlsson took a phone call from KSU head coach Blake Smart. Long-distance conversations and videos of Karlsson’s swing were enough to convince Smart that the young Swede had a place in Kennesaw. 

“I never went on a visit,” Karlsson said. “I just said, ‘Okay, I’ll go and try it, and if I don’t like it, I can always come back.’ Obviously, I ended up loving it.”

Air Conditioning and Yellow Gatorade

Before Karlsson even stepped on a green with the Owls, he found things to love about his new life in the U.S. 

When Karlsson and his father went looking for dorm room supplies, they were enthralled by a place that had everything they needed – Walmart. 

Transitioning from Sweden’s temperate summers to the apex of Georgia heat was no easy task, at least until Karlsson discovered yellow Gatorade and air conditioning.

“I tried a yellow Gatorade and just stocked my fridge full of them because they were so tasty,” Karlsson said. “My memories of that time are drinking yellow Gatorade in an air-conditioned dorm room.”

While Karlsson had learned some English in Sweden, understanding a college lecture in English was a different matter. 

“It was mentally exhausting to go to class after class and have to translate everything I heard,” Karlsson recalled. “That was hard in the beginning.”

Despite the heat and the language hurdles, it was Karlsson’s love for golf and the newfound friendship of his teammates that helped him find joy in his new journey. 

Teammates like Alex Jones, Chad Wilson, J.P. Putnam, Mike Tulacz, Matthew Nagy and Christopher Johnson helped Karlsson acclimate to a new team, new courses and new surroundings – even giving him rides until he could get a car of his own. 

“They were so good at making me feel welcome,” Karlsson said. “I made friends really fast.”

New Confidence and New Success

After a 2008-09 freshman season in which Karlsson’s 11 event appearances tied for the team lead, a new era dawned for KSU with the arrival of head coach Jay Moseley. 

An All-American and 36-hole program record scorer at Auburn, Moseley quickly made an impact on Karlsson and the Owls. 

After observing Karlsson’s play for a few weeks, Moseley marked a turning point in Karlsson’s career with a catalyzing conversation. 

“He told me that he saw something special in my game, that I had a tremendous amount of talent and that I could go as far as I wanted to in golf,” Karlsson remembered. “That coming from him, knowing his background, was incredible to hear. It shifted my mindset and gave me more confidence.”

That newfound confidence quickly found its way onto the course when, just days later, Karlsson won the first tournament of his KSU career at Southern Miss’s Sam Hall Invitational at Hattiesburg Country Club in September 2009.

The Owls went on to finish runners-up in the April 2010 Atlantic Sun Championships. 

A year later, Karlsson won the individual ASUN title with a score of 6-under-par 209 while helping the program win a team title of its own. Both went down as the first conference championships in KSU men’s golf history.

“I remember trying to keep myself focused on one shot at a time during that last day,” Karlsson said of the 2011 ASUN Tournament at Chateau Elan in Braselton, Georgia. “When Coach Moseley told me I was leading the individual scoring by four shots and that we were going to win the title, I played the rest of the round with a smile on my face.”

The 2011 Owls weren’t satisfied with winning the ASUN and went on to tie for third in the NCAA Southeast Regional and tie for 26th nationally in their first-ever NCAA Championships. 

“It was very special to be part of that first KSU team at nationals,” Karlsson said. “Becoming one of the best teams in the country felt like a testimony to all the hard work everyone had put in.”

Karlsson’s hard work yielded a slew of individual accolades as well.

With a school-record stroke average of 70.61 and a top 20 national finish in 2010-11, Karlsson was awarded GCAA Second Team All-American, ASUN Men’s Golfer of the Year and one of three career All-ASUN selections.

When his KSU career came to a close, Karlsson also held school records with four individual tournament wins, 18 top-10 finishes and a three-round low tournament score of 199. 

Pursuing the Professional

Karlsson’s pursuit of a professional golf career began in 2012 and took him to tours on four continents, including PGA Canada and PGA South America as well as European and Asian Tour events. 

Just days before a PGA qualifying event in Hawaii, Karlsson suffered a freak paddleboarding injury to his pinky that required stitches. 

Karlsson wasn’t deterred and cut the pinky off his left glove, allowing him to play through his bandages and qualify for the 2016 Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego, California. 

“I didn’t score very well there, but I’ll always look back on that as something I’m very glad that I got to experience,” Karlsson said. 

A golf career may have been off the table for Karlsson, but business certainly wasn’t.

With a degree from the Coles College of Business and a year-long experience participating in its student-managed investment fund, Karlsson was fully equipped to step into a new career. 

“I feel like KSU and the Coles College of Business helped me get that foundation to get started in a career that wasn’t golf,” Karlsson said. “They teach you everything you need to know to step into that world.”

Today, Karlsson lives in that world, with his wife and child in New York City, where he works in investments at Group 1001.

The former All-American and conference champion may not be able to hit the links as often as he once did on long Swedish summer nights or as a collegiate golfer at KSU, but he still finds a way to weave golf into his business career.

“I’ve been able to keep my game at a pretty good level,” Karlsson said. “It’s always fun to get out with people, and it’s good for networking.”

If one goes looking for Jeff Karlsson today, he’s more likely to be found in a New York high-rise than on a Georgia green or putting beneath a Swedish twilight.

And yet, within the New York businessman today is found the determined teen learner, ascendant Owl student-athlete and globe-trotting professional golfer. 

That is the Jeff Karlsson who will soon be found in the Kennesaw State Athletics Hall of Fame. 

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