Three days after being named the recipient of the Ben Hogan Award, which honors the nation’s best golfer, senior Doug Ghim was named a finalist for the Jack Nicklaus Award for the same honor. Along with Ghim, four other golfers were named finalists. Fellow rival Chandler Phillips (Texas A&M), Justin Suh (USC), Shintaro Ban (UNLV) and Norman Xiong (Oregon) are finalists.
The 2018 Jack Nicklaus Award will be announced next Thursday, May 31 and the award will be presented to the winner by Jack Nicklaus himself on Sunday, June 3 during the last day of the PGA Tour Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio.
With the event being sponsored by Barbasol, the winner of this award will compete in the Barbasol Shootout next weekend for freedom into the PGA Tour Barbasol Championship in Lexington, Kentucky in July.
(Golf Digest took a look at the different college golf player-of-the-year awards in an article this week.)
This is another one of many major achievements that Ghim has earned this year. In April, at The Masters, he was the lone amateur to make the cut and was awarded the low amateur Silver Cup while representing burnt orange on his chest. He also led the field with a total of two eagles on the week. At the Big 12 Championship, Ghim tied with three others to claim an individual share of the conference title. Last week at the NCAA Regional in Raleigh, he finished atop the individual leaderboard (-17) helping the Longhorns advance to yet another NCAA Championship. On Monday night, he was awarded the Ben Hogan Award. Ghim will also compete in his second major of the year at the 2018 U.S. Open from Shinnecock Hills (Tuckahoe, New York) next month.
Ghim is currently the No. 1 player in the Scratch Players World Amateur Ranking, and is listed in the top eight in three other major golf ranking systems.
Texas’ men’s golf team tees off around 1:37 p.m. CT at the NCAA Championship tomorrow in Stillwater, Oklahoma. For more coverage, follow along with Texas Men’s Golf on Twitter (@TexasMGolf).