March 2, 2006
ATLANTA – Georgia Tech golfers Roberto Castro and Kevin Larsen have both made the watch list for the 2006 Ben Hogan Award, the most prestigious award in men’s college golf given annually by the Golf Coaches Association of America.
The Hogan is presented annually to the top men’s NCAA Division I, II or III, NAIA or junior college golfer taking into account all collegiate and amateur competitions during the last 12 months. The GCAA presents it along with Bank of America, Colonial Country Club and the Friends of Golf.
Castro is one of eight returning first-team All-Americans up for the award, a list that includes Ryan Blaum of Duke; Arizona State’s Alejandro Canizares; Roberto Castro of Georgia Tech; East Tennessee State’s Rhys Davies; Matt Every of Florida; Oklahoma’s Anthony Kim; James Lepp of Washington and Oklahoma State’s Pablo Martin highlight the list.
Larsen, a junior from Santa Barbara, Calif., has been Tech’s top performer this year with an Atlantic Coast Conference-leading stroke average of 71.11 and five top-10 finishes in six tournaments. He was named a mid-season All-American by Golf World magazine and is currently ranked No. 4 nationally in the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index.
Castro, a junior from Alpharetta, Ga., has earned five top-20 finishes, including one top-10, in six tournaments this year and has a 71.28 stroke average, third-best in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Castro has 21 career top-20 finishes in 30 events, and is currently ranked No. 8 nationally.
Others on the 27-player watch list include Scott Brown and Dane Burkhart, the defending NCAA Division II national champion, of South Carolina-Aiken; Jay Choi of New Mexico; U.S. Amateur runner-up Dillon Dougherty of Northwestern; Texas Tech’s Oscar Floren; Erik Flores of UCLA; UNLV’s Andres Gonzales; and Jake Grodzinsky of Duke; Brian Harman, the nation’s top-ranked amateur, and Chris Kirk of Georgia; Stanford’s Rob Grube; Coastal Carolina’s Dustin Johnson; Vanderbilt’s Luke List; U.S. Public Links champion Clay Ogden of BYU; Kyle Reifers and Webb Simpson of Wake Forest and North Carolina’s Martin Ureta.
The Hogan Award selection committee will announce 10 semi-finalists on Mar. 29 and name three finalists on May 2. The three finalists will attend the Hogan Award banquet on May 13 at Colonial Country Club — the Saturday prior to the Bank of America Colonial — with the recipient announced that evening.
