BATON ROUGE – For the second year in a row, LSU senior All-American John Peterson has been recognized among the elite golfers in the college game with his selection to the first watch list for the Ben Hogan Award presented annually to the NCAA’s top player.
The 2011 Ben Hogan Award will be presented by Baird Private Wealth Management, in conjunction with Colonial Country Club, The Friends of Golf and the Golf Coaches Association of America.
The Ben Hogan Award honors the top men’s college golfer in NCAA Division I, II, III, NAIA or NJCAA taking into account all collegiate and amateur competitions during a 12-month period.
Peterson, who picked up Second-Team All-America honors in 2009 and Honorable Mention All-America honors in 2010 by both PING and Golfweek, has carried that momentum into a senior season in which he has already earned one top-five and two top-10 finishes in collegiate competition while recording a stroke average of 72.8 strokes per round in four tournament appearances for the Tigers.
Prior to opening the 2011 spring season at the Gator Invitational on Feb. 12-13, Peterson defeated an elite amateur field for the individual championship at the prestigious Jones Cup Invitational held on Feb. 4-6 at Ocean Forest Golf Club in St. Simons Island, Ga. He fired a tournament-low 4-under 68 in the final round to take the title with a 54-hole score of 1-over par 217 in three days of competition.
The field at the 2011 Jones Cup Invitational featured many of the nation’s premier amateur and collegiate golfers, including 13 Golfweek All-Americans from the 2010 season.
The semifinalists for The Ben Hogan Award will be announced April 14 followed by the three finalists in May. The three finalists for this year’s Ben Hogan Award will receive an invitational to Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, on May 16 for the Hogan Award announcement ceremony.
2011 Ben Hogan Award Watch List
Blayne Barber, Auburn
Patrick Cantlay, UCLA
Bud Cauley, Alabama
Alex Ching, San Diego
David Chung, Stanford
Harris English, Georgia
J.T. Griffin, Georgia Tech
Luke Guthrie, Illinois
Russell Henley, Georgia
Morgan Hoffmann, Oklahoma State
Bobby Hudson, Texas
Vince India, Iowa
Lion Kim, Michigan
Scott Langley, Illinois
Tain Lee, Claremont McKenna
Gregor Main, UCLA
Henrik Norlander, Augusta State
John Peterson, LSU
Andrew Putnam, Pepperdine
Patrick Reed, Augusta State
Kevin Tway, Oklahoma State
Peter Uihlein, Oklahoma State
Bank Vongvanij, Florida
Pontus Widegren, UCLA
Bobby Wyatt, Alabama
Andrew Yun, Stanford