Recent Georgia Tech standout Anders Albertson is headed to the PGA Tour after winning a Web.com
Tour event in Illinois a week ago.
Albertson, who grew up in Woodstock and is residing in Alpharetta, will join Georgia Tech teammate and
former junior rival Ollie Schniederjans on the PGA Tour for the 2018-19 season after a spectacular final
round that included 10 birdies, seven of them in succession.
To win the Lincoln Land Championship in Springfield, Ill., Albertson shot 8-under 63 in the final round to
erase a 2-stroke deficit after 54 holes. He needed all 10 of his birdies to hold off a challenge from Adam
Long, who also shot 63 in the final round.
Third round leader Kramer Hickok recovered from a slow start to make a late charge and pulled into a
tie for the lead before a birdie on the finishing hole gave Albertson a winning margin of two strokes over
both players.
Albertson finished with a 25-under total of 259 to earn the first place check of $99,000 and vault from
45 th to eighth on the Web.com Tour money list with $172,200. He followed his victory with a tie for 20 th
Sunday in the tour stop on Lake Erie and remained in the top 10 in the ninth spot. With just six
tournaments remaining in the regular season, Albertson is guaranteed a spot among the top 25 money
winners, which will secure a PGA Tour card for the upcoming season, which begins in October.
The victory came in Albertson’s third season on the tour, with the 25-year-old Yellow Jacket qualifying in
his first attempt after graduating in 2015. Albertson won twice at the mini-tour level in his first season as
a pro, one of his victories coming close to home at Echelon GC on the north Fulton/Cherokee County
border.
After earning his spot on the Web.com Tour for 2016 via the qualifying process, Albertson retained his
playing privileges for 2017 after an inconsistent rookie season that consisted of more failures than
successes. Albertson made only eight of 23 cuts that season, including his first three and his last five in
succession, but one big week early in the year in Brazil offset all the missed cuts.
Albertson closed his week in Brazil with scores of 62-66-66 to finish at 20-under 264 in third place. The
$47,600 check was enough to get Albertson into the top 75 and earn exempt status for 2017 despite no
other finishes better than 13 th , that coming a few weeks later in Mexico. A late season tie for 17 th
solidified Albertson’s spot in the top 75 at No. 56, but he was unable to earn his PGA Tour card through
the Web.com Finals series.
After his inconsistent rookie showing, Albertson enjoyed a steadier sophomore season, making the cut
in 14 of 25 starts with four top 10s to finish 62 nd on the regular season money list. His best finish was a
tie for fifth in the event he won the next year, with Albertson making a run at a PGA Tour card when he
tied for eighth in the Web.com Tour Championship, the last of the four tournaments in the Finals
series.
Prior to his recent victory, Albertson had been playing solid golf throughout the 2018 season, missing
just two of 13 cuts with seven top-25 finishes. However, he had not enjoyed that one big week
necessary for moving up the money list on the Web.com Tour, with a tie for eighth in Knoxville his best
finish.
Coming into the Lincoln Land Championship, Albertson had placed between eighth and 14 th in three of
his five previous starts, and had posted scores of 71 or lower in each of his last 20 rounds.
He opened his week in Springfield with consecutive scores of 66, going 35 holes without a bogey before
making on his 18 th hole the second day. He was three shots off the lead at that point, and cut his deficit
to two after a bogey-free 64 in the third round.
Albertson began the final round in a tie for second, and was playing in the next-to-last group in front of
54-hole leader Hickok.
Long, who was several groups ahead of the leaders, was the first challenger to move past Hickok, but
Albertson answered with a run of seven consecutive birdies beginning at the fourth hole. He took his
first lead after scoring his fifth straight birdie at the eighth, but Long was matching him birdie for birdie.
After playing his first 13 holes in 8-under par, Long parred his last five to finish at 23-under.
Albertson got to 24-under following his seventh straight birdie at the 10 th , but after having just one
bogey on his scorecard over his first 64 holes, he made back-to-back bogeys at holes 11 and 12 to drop
out of the lead. He regained a share of the lead when he birdied the par-5 13 th after reaching the green
in two. He also birdied the par-5 16 th to move back in front, but when Hickok also birdied the hole, his
fourth in a row, the two were tied.
Hickok fell back into a tie for second with a bogey at 17, and Albertson put the tournament away when
he hit his approach from the rough on the par-4 18 th within three feet and holed the putt for his 10 th
birdie of the day and 29 th of the tournament.
At 5-foot-9, Albertson is not among the longest drives on the Web.com Tour, but is right around the tour
average at 303 yards per drive. He is a respectable 36 th in fairways hit and 62 nd in greens in regulation,
but has done his best work this season on the greens, ranking seventh in putting average per GIR.
Thanks to his putting prowess, Albertson ranks fourth on the tour in birdies and is seventh in scoring
average at 69.55.
Albertson is one of three Georgia residents who are currently in position to earn PGA Tour cards for
2018-19. Joey Garber, who played for UGA while Albertson was at Georgia Tech, will join the long list of
St, Simons Island residents on the PGA Tour. He is 10 th in earnings, just behind Albertson. Roberto
Castro, like Albertson a former Yellow Jacket from the Atlanta area (Alpharetta), is currently 17 th after
not playing in four of the last six tour events.
Albertson was not the only ex-Georgia Tech golfer to play well in the recent event in Illinois. Suwanee’s
Seth Reeves, a teammate of Albertson along with Schniederjans and PGA Tour member Richy Werenski,
was in position for a possible top-10 finish before a late bogey dropped him into a tie for 16 th . That
moved Reeves into the 75 th spot on the money list, but he dropped back to 79 th after Sunday’s results.
During his victory, Albertson had Acworth’s Michael Hines, another of his Georgia Tech teammates, on
his bag as caddie.
Albertson’s college career at Georgia Tech was highlighted by a pair of victories in the ACC
Championship, and he had a career total of six top 10s in ACC and NCAA Championships. He finished his
college career third in school history in scoring average, and never missed a tournament in his four years
at Tech.
Prior to his college career, Albertson won the 2010 GSGA Atlanta Match Play Championship and nearly
won the Dogwood Invitational that year and the GSGA Championship in 2011.