NORMAN, Okla. – Junior Cameron Champ and sophomore Chandler Phillips of the Texas A&M men’s golf team were named semifinalists for the 2017 Division I Jack Nicklaus National Player of the Year Award presented by Barbasol on Tuesday.
Champ and Phillips join a field of 30 of the top golfers in the country which will be narrowed down further on May 25 before the Nicklaus award recipients will be announced on June 1. The honor will be presented by Jack Nicklaus at a ceremony during the final round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio.
In addition to receiving the Jack Nicklaus National Player of the Year Award, the five recipients will compete in the Barbasol Shootout for an exemption into the PGA TOUR’s Barbasol Championship, held July 20-23, at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Grand National in Opelika, Ala. The Barbasol Shootout will be held June 3 at the storied Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio – the same club where Jack Nicklaus first learned the game of golf as a young boy.
Phillips has posted a pair of individual titles this season, winning the Golfweek Conference Challenge and the John Burns Intercollegiate. The sophomore is on pace to break the single-season Aggie scoring record with a 70.76 stroke per round pace. Phillips has posted a team-high eight top-10 showings and has carded par or better in a school-record 27 rounds.
Champ is also on pace for one of the best seasons in program history, maintaining a 71.39 scoring average. The Sacramento, Calif., native has one tournament title and five top-five finishes. The junior had a red-hot finish to the year with top-six finishes in five of his last six events. Champ represented the Aggies last season at the NCAA Championships after finishing seventh at the NCAA regionals.
Phillips and Champ, the 14th and 22nd-ranked golfers in the nation by Golfweek, respectively, finished in the top-five of the individual leaderboard in April’s SEC Men’s Golf Championship. The pair then went a combined 6-0 in the match play portion to help the Aggies finish runner-up to Vanderbilt.
The duo along with the rest of the 14th-ranked Aggies will learn their postseason destination when pairings and competition sites for the 2017 NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship are revealed on the morning of May 4. The regionals are set for May 15-17.
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DIVISION I JACK NICKLAUS NATIONAL PLAYER OF THE YEAR AWARD SEMIFINALISTS
Dawson Armstrong, Lipscomb
Sam Burns, LSU
Cameron Champ, Texas A&M
Wyndham Clark, Oregon
Sean Crocker, Southern California
Cristobal Del Solar, Florida State
Jared du Toit, Arizona State
Doug Ghim, Texas
Nick Hardy, Illinois
Rico Hoey, Southern California
Sam Horsfield, Florida
Theo Humphrey, Vanderbilt
Patrick Martin, Vanderbilt
Maverick McNealy, Stanford
Dylan Meyer, Illinois
Collin Morikawa, California
Kyle Mueller, Michigan
John Oda, UNLV
Zachary Olsen, Oklahoma State
Chandler Phillips, Texas A&M
Doc Redman, Clemson
Matthias Schwab, Vanderbilt
Greyson Sigg, Georgia
Jimmy Stanger, Virginia
Sahith Theegala, Pepperdine
Braden Thornberry, Mississippi
Alejandro Tosti, Florida
Dylan Wu, Northwestern
Norman Xiong, Oregon
Will Zalatoris, Wake Forest
Story courtesy of Texas A&M Athletics