Later this month, two months after finishing tied for 20th in a Korn Ferry Tour event in his native Florida, Miles Russell will make his PGA Tour debut at Michigan's Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club on a sponsor's exemption.

Miles Russell is 15 years old.

On one hand, it is darned impressive for a golfer to be considered skilled enough to tee it up in a PGA Tour event before he's legally allowed to drive a car.

On the other, it feels a little...icky.

For a pastime that likes to bill itself as "a game for a lifetime," the professional sport of golf sure likes its young talents, and will go to great lengths to promote them, even when they're still amateurs, and still kids.

Being the best 15-year-old golfer is virtually meaningless. At most, it makes you a curiosity, an exciting prospect. Being the best 21-, 25- and 30-year-old golfer, however - that's the real goal. Any great young talent - not to mention the people caring for him or her - should understand that. Nevertheless, young Miles Russell will enter golf's brightly-lit stage about a month after another prodigious young talent announced plans to leave it behind.

At the age of 29, Lexi Thompson surprised golf fans and media when she announced last week that the 2024 U.S. Women's Open would be her last, and that she would be winding down her competitive golf career soon. Her last appearance was also her 18th, as Thompson first appeared in the event in 2007 at the age of just 12 years old and qualified for every edition since.

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Thompson is not even the youngest-ever participant in the championship's history. That distinction goes to Lucy Li, who qualified for the 2014 edition at just 11 years of age. Li was not remotely competitive in that tournament, but did make headlines with her press conferences-turned-ice cream socials. Endearing scenes to be sure, but not without the discomfiting feeling that a broad table facing dozens of reporters is likely not the best place for someone who is still multiple years away from high school.

Prodigies in any sport are newsworthy to a certain extent. They help broaden our appreciation for what human beings are capable of. But time and again, the public shows itself less willing to nurture and protect that precocity than leer and sneer at it, or expect far too much from it. There is a long and mostly disconcerting history of children thrust into the public eye having difficult later lives. The sagas of child stars like Dustin Diamond, Amanda Bynes, Lindsay Lohan and others should give any large institution pause as it ponders the implications of promoting children in spaces that are built for adults.

"Golf is not showbiz," you may argue, but golf's big-money explosion clearly underlies a thirst for a slice of the greater sports-cultural pie. Besides, there are numerous cases of kids being thrown into the mix of professional golf at an early age with absurd expectations and unnatural amounts of attention heaped upon them. Ty Tryon, Ryo Ishikawa and Tadd Fujikawa come to mind on the men's side, as does Guan Tianlang, who earned a spot in the 2013 Masters at 14 but has scarcely been heard from since. The social media froth every time Charlie Woods plays in a golf tournament speaks (poorly) for itself.

Lexi Thompson and Michelle Wie West are the most recent examples on the women's side of golf. They literally grew up in the public eye, playing in high-profile tournaments - and being subject to the resulting scrutiny - since their early teens. The game will hopefully benefit from Thompson's and Wie West's influence for years to come, but there is no doubt sport will miss their tournament participation and their presence as veteran players alongside the next generation (not that they owe us anything - another fallacy fame puts on people).

Did their careers both end and start too early? Lydia Ko's LPGA Tour success dating back to her teenage years - she's one win away from Hall of Fame qualification and she's 27 years old - feels more like an exception than the rule.

What needs to be done about golf's borderline-obsession with youth? It's hard to tell a sponsor like Rocket Mortgage not to give an exemption to someone whose presence they feel would enrich their tournament, but it might be the moral thing to do.

Should there be a lower age cutoff for PGA Tour event participation? In 2010, Jordan Spieth finished tied for 16th in a PGA Tour event at the age of 16. Just a few weeks ago, 16-year-old amateur Blades Brown finished tied for 26th in the PGA Tour's inaugural Myrtle Beach Classic. Those are the types of performances that fans and tournament organizers can use to preserve the status quo. But it's not as if teenage golfers lack for competitive opportunities. The menu of junior and amateur golf tournaments has never been better, and there's a great deal to be said for stacking wins against your peers as a teen so you can keep doing it as an adult. While I'd be reticent to bar any great golfer from duly qualifying for a PGA Tour event because of age, it feels like sponsor exemptions ought to be reserved for people who have at least graduated high school.

So what is the goal of putting children in high-profile professional golf tournaments? More fans? More general attention? Isn't that a tacit admission that a regular-old PGA Tour event is not interesting in and of itself? If the Rocket Mortgage Classic feels it needs Miles Russell, who is not a member of the PGA Tour, in order to elevate it in the eyes of fans, then the true problems are not something a 15-year-old can or should ever in a sane world be expected to fix.

Should there be a minimum age requirement for sponsor's exemptions in professional golf? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.