Maverick McNealy of Stanford, USC teammates Sean Crocker and Rico Hoey, and Collin Morikawa of California are among 28 golfers have been named to the 2017 Ben Hogan Award watch list by the Friends of Golf, the Golf Coaches Association of America and Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas.
McNealy (pictured), a senior from Portola Valley, claimed his 11th victory for the Cardinal in the Nike Golf Collegiate Invitational in October, tying Tiger Woods and Patrick Rodgers for the school record.
Others on the watch list include Sam Burns of LSU), Cameron Champ of Texas A&M, Wyndham Clark of Oregon), Jared du Toit of Arizona State, Jorge Garcia of Florida, Doug Ghim of Texas, Gavin Hall of Texas, Nick Hardy of Illinois, Sam Horsfield of Florida, Viktor Hovland of Oklahoma State), Will Long of Auburn, Patrick Martin of Vanderbilt, Dylan Meyer of Illinois, John Oda of UNLV, Chandler Phillips of Texas A&M) Doc Redman of Clemson, Scottie Scheffler of Texas, Matthias Schwab of Vanderbilt, Greyson Sigg of Georgia, Jimmy Stanger of Virginia, Sam Stevens of Oklahoma State, Braden Thornberry of Mississippi, Alejandro Tosti of Florida and Will Zalatoris of Wake Forest.
The Ben Hogan Award selectors obviously got it right the last two years, choosing Jon Rahm of Arizona State, who three weeks ago claimed his first PGA Tour victory in the Farmers Insurance Open.
Other winners since the inception of the ward 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), Chris Williams (Washington, 2013) and Patrick Rodgers (Stanford, 2014).
