May 5, 2006
ATLANTA – With clutch play to win their respective conference individual championships, Georgia Tech’s Cameron Tringale and Florida’s Brett Stegmaier and have been named joint winners of the Southern Golf Association’s National Amateur of the Month Award for April. Both scored one-stroke victories over 2005 U.S. Walker Cup members. It was just the second time in the monthly awards four-year history that the selection panel has deadlocked and declared co-winners.
Tringale, a freshman from Laguna Niguel, Calif., birdied the final hole to take his Atlantic Coast Conference individual title in dramatic fashion by a single shot over Wake Forest Walker Cupper Kyle Reifers. Tringale posted a 10-under-par total of 206 on Old North State Club in New London, NC, leading his Yellow Jackets to a tied with North Carolina for the team title. It was Tringale’s second individual tournament win this season.
Stegmaier, a senior from Madison, Conn., posted a 5-under-par 205 total to take medalist honors in the Southeastern Conference Championship at Sea Island, Georgia. That was enough to edge Georgias heralded Brian Harman, who led the Bulldogs to a 1-shot team victory over Florida on the demanding Seaside Course. It was Stegmaiers second SEC individual title during his UF career.
The March-through-October monthly SGA award is selected from among amateur performances throughout the U.S. in all age groups by a national blue-ribbon panel of golf officials, coaches and journalists. Last month, Memphis State’s Keven Fortin-Simard was named the first 2006 winner. The 103-year-old Southern Golf Association promotes amateur golf in a variety of ways, including the staging of the prestigious Southern Amateur Championship, the milestone 100th edition of which will be played in July at the Country Club of Birmingham. The tournament annually rewards its champ with a berth in the PGA Tour’s Bay Hill Invitational, which will become the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard in 2007.
