It’s been a breakout year for Auburn Riverside’s Nolan Cull.

The Ravens’ 16-year-old junior qualified for his second appearance in the state 4A golf championships – to be settled next May – with a second-place finish at the West Central District tournament.

He led his squad this fall by medalling in 10 of the team’s 11 matches and notching six eagles in league play. Nolan was selected the South Puget Sound League Central Division 4A Player of the Year, in addition to earning all-league first-team honors.

Although he’s been playing in tournaments since he was 6 years old at the par-3 Riverbend Golf Complex in Kent, the genesis of his success this year lies in a decision he made after his freshman year at Auburn Riverside.

“He came up to me after that freshman baseball season and said, ‘You know, dad, I’m not going to play baseball anymore after fall ball,’” Brian Cull said. “He was always a good golfer with natural talent, but he’d never really taken any hardcore lessons. I just let him play with his talents.”

The decision was not an easy one for the younger Cull.

“I just figured out that I had more potential in golf,” he said.

Nolan began taking lessons with Gregg Rogers of Golf Performance in Bellevue last winter.

“They broke down his game and swing the next winter and spring before he turned 15,” Brian said.

The goal was to make Nolan a more consistent golfer and give him the tools he needed to take him to the next level.

“He would shoot 73 and then 80 in a weekend back then,” Brian said. “It became about shooting 73 back-to-back. It was about taking that 73 and shooting 69 and then taking it into those sub-par numbers.”

To achieve that consistency, Nolan was forced to change his grip, stance and posture.

“I told him he was going to have to take a very large step backward in order to take a couple of steps forward,” Brian said. “That summer was a long summer for him. He was shooting 80, 82 or 79.”

Nolan admits the process was arduous.

“The first couple of weeks, you don’t want to deal with it, you just want to go back to what’s natural,” he said. “It’s almost embarrassing when you go play with your friends and they’re like, ‘Dude, you got terrible.’ They don’t actually say it, but you know they’re thinking it.”

Still, he stuck with the new coaching advice.

“I just knew that it would turn out,” he said.

Everything started to come together for Nolan in his sophomore season. He led the SPSL Central 4A in scoring and earned a spot on the all-league first team.

His third-place district finish qualified him for state, where he placed 12th, shooting rounds of 76 and 75.

As good as he was last spring, however, last summer he was even better.

He narrowly missed qualifying for the Junior PGA National Championships and the Junior World tourney by two strokes, notching a 145 and a 147, respectively.

“After a year of taking those lessons, it all started to click this summer,” Nolan said.

“He’s really into a whole new level, constancy-wise now,” Brian said. “He had a stroke average of 73.8 for the summer for all the big tournaments he played in.”

Now that the high school season is over until May’s state championship, Nolan said he’ll continue to fine tune his game at Auburn’s Washington National Golf Club, where he works. He will prepare for next summer’s junior golf season, where he hopes to attract the attention of some college coaches.

“College is the first stage of what I want to do,” Nolan said. “You want to dream big, but not too big that it’s unrealistic. Plus I want to go to college, so if things don’t turn out the way I want, I have a Plan B. I’m sure I’m on the radar somewhere, but nothing has been said to me yet.

The key, Nolan added, will be his performance this summer on the junior circuit.

“The summer between my junior and senior year is really the biggest summer,” he said. “It’s when they really pay attention.”