Fort Worth, TX – Georgia Tech’s Ollie Schniederjans is among 10 collegiate golfers named semifinalists for the 2014 Ben Hogan Award, the second straight year he has earned that distinction.
The Ben Hogan Award is presented annually to the top men’s NCAA Division I, II or III, NAIA or NJCAA college golfer taking into account all collegiate and amateur competitions during the 12-month period dating from the previous award’s banquet. The Ben Hogan Award Selection Committee is made up of 25 leaders and experts in amateur, college and professional golf.
The Tech senior from Powder Springs, Ga., was a finalist for the Hogan Award last spring after winning five tournaments during the 2013-14 academic year. He won his sixth career tournament in the fall, the Carpet Capital Collegiate, and has been a runner-up three other times among his seven top-10 finishes this year. He is currently ranked No. 8 nationally in the Golfweek/Sagarin Index and No. 14 in Golfstat.
Schniederjans has a team-best scoring average of 70.00 over 27 rounds in 2014-15 and a career mark of 70.89, which stands as the second-best in Tech golf history.
In alphabetical order, the semifinalists are: Gavin Green (New Mexico), Beau Hossler (Texas), Kyle Jones (Baylor), Lee McCoy (Georgia), Maverick McNealy (Stanford), Cheng-Tsung Pan (Washington), Jon Rahm (Arizona State), Schniederjans, Robby Shelton (Alabama) and Hunter Stewart (Vanderbilt).
This is the first time since 2005 that 10 different schools are represented on the semifinalist list. Pan, Schniederjans and Shelton are semifinalists for the second straight year, and Pan is the first golfer ever to be a four-time semifinalist.
On Wednesday, May 6, 2015 the list of 10 semifinalists will be pared down to three finalists. The three finalists will attend a black-tie banquet at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, on Monday, May 18, where the winner will be crowned.
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 prior to the start of the PGA TOUR’s Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial.