April 16, 2014
Vote for Ollie for Ben Hogan Award
Norman, Okla. – Georgia Tech’s Ollie Schniederjans has been named one of 10 semi-finalists for The Ben Hogan Award, is presented annually to the top men’s NCAA Division I, II or III, NAIA or NJCAA college golfer.
Colonial Country Club, Friends of Golf (FOG) and the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA) announced the semi-finalists, which include five seniors, three juniors, a sophomore and a freshman. The Ben Hogan Award Selection Committee considers all collegiate and amateur competitions during the 12-month period dating from the previous award’s banquet, and is made up of 24 leaders and experts in amateur, college and professional golf.
Schniederjans is joined in the group by Bryson Dechambeau (SMU), Greg Eason (UCF), Joey Garber (Georgia), Brandon Hagy (California), Cheng-Tsung Pan (Washington), Patrick Rodgers (Stanford), Robby Shelton (Alabama), Cameron Wilson (Stanford) and Bobby Wyatt (Alabama).
The Tech junior from Powder Springs, Ga., is No. 4 nationally in the Golfweek/Sagarin Index and No. 7 in the Golfstat rankings for U.S. collegiate players. He has won four tournaments this year, including the Valspar Invitational and the Robert Kepler Invitational this spring, and earned three other top-10 finishes. His stroke average of 69.90 would rank No. 2 in Tech history if the season ended today, and he has a 91.5-percent head-to-head winning rate in 10 tournaments this year.
He was named “Player of the Mid-Season” by Golf World magazine after he won twice and finished on the top five of the other two events in which Tech competed in the fall. Last summer, Schniederjans qualified for the U.S. Amateur and earned top-5 finishes in five amateur events.
Schniederjans is bidding to become the first Tech player ever to win The Ben Hogan Award, which has been given since 1990, though Chesson Hadley was named a semifinalist in 2008. David Duval, Stewart Cink, Matt Kuchar and Bryce Molder have all won national player of the year awards bestowed by other organizations.
In the college rankings, the list of semi-finalists includes the top seven players in the Golfstat rankings and the top six players in the Golfweek/Sagarin individual rankings. In the amateur rankings, the list features three of the top four players in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, as well as four of the top five players in the Scratch Players World Amateur listing.
On Wednesday, May 7, the group of 10 semi-finalists will be pared down to three finalists. The trio will attend a black-tie banquet at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth on Sunday, May 18, where the recipient will be announced. The winner will receive an exemption into the PGA Tour’s 2015 Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial. Schniederjans already has one sponsor exemption into a 2015 Tour event, the Valspar Championship, earned by winning the Valspar Invitational last month.
The award, which was first issued in 1990 and included academic achievement in its original list of standards, revised its criteria for the 2001-02 collegiate season to its current standard of honoring the outstanding amateur collegiate golfer. Since that time, the winners have been: D.J. Trahan (Clemson, 2002), Ricky Barnes (Arizona, 2003), Hunter Mahan (Oklahoma State, 2003), Bill Haas (Wake Forest, 2004), Ryan Moore (UNLV, 2005), Matt Every (Florida, 2006), Chris Kirk (Georgia, 2007), Rickie Fowler (Oklahoma State, 2008), Kyle Stanley (Clemson, 2009), Nick Taylor (Washington, 2010), Peter Uihlein (Oklahoma State, 2011), Patrick Cantlay (UCLA, 2012) and Chris Williams (Washington, 2013).
For more information on The Ben Hogan Award, visit TheBenHoganAward.org and follow @BenHoganAward on Twitter.
