Emma Spitz of UCLA is one of 10 golfers listed on the final watch list for the Annika Award presented by Stifel, which goes to the player of the year in Division I women’s college golf.
The award will be presented this year even though much of the Spring Season was canceled because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
“We feel it is important during this difficult time to still honor the nation’s top players as voted on by their peers, coaches and the media,” said golf great Annika Sorenstam of Sweden, for whom the Annika Award is named.
“The chosen players always will be an Annika or Haskins Award (given to men’s player of the year) winner, and we can’t let the unexpectedly rapid conclusion to the college golf season stop us from acknowledging achievements that will last a lifetime.”
Voting for the Annika Award will run from April 7-21 and is open to all Division I players and coaches, plus members of the media. The winner of the award will be announced late May.
Spitz (pictured), a freshman from Austria who won the 2018 Girls’ British Open Amateur Championship and the 2019 Slovenian Amateur Championship, claimed her first college title in the Bruin Wave Invitational, one of her five top-10 finishes for the Bruins this season.
Others on the final watch list include senior Natalie Srinivasan of Furman; freshman Vivian Hou of Arizona and Taiwan; junior Emilia Migliaccio of Wake Forest; freshman Rachel Kuehn of Wake Forest; freshman Ingrid Lindblad of LSU and Sweden; freshman Pauline Roussin-Bouchard of South Carolina and France; junior Kaitlyn Papp of Texas; senior Pimnipa Panthong of Kent State and Thailand, and senior Ana Belac of Duke and Slovenia.
Past winners of the Annika Award include Leona Maguire of Duke and Ireland, Alison Lee of UCLA and Valencia, Calif., and Maria Fassi of Arkansas and Mexico, who last year won the award for a second time.
