It’s been a remarkable college golf season for the best of the best from the state of Colorado — unprecedented, in fact.
After all, it’s an amazing achievement that a Colorado resident was ranked No. 1 nationally in NCAA Division I golf. Yet this past season, there’s been stretches where Coloradans were simultaneously atop the rankings in both men’s and women’s college golf.
And on Wednesday, the achievements by both Jennifer Kupcho of Westminster and Wyndham Clark of Highlands Ranch hit home once again as the Golf Channel televised the announcements of the winners of both the Fred Haskins Award and the Annika Award. Those go to the top college players in the nation on the men’s and women’s sides, respectively.
Both Kupcho, who plays for Wake Forest, and Clark, who just wrapped up his career at the University of Oregon, were finalists for the respective honors. There were three women up for the Annika Award and three men in contention for the Haskins Award. Alas, both Kupcho and Clark (pictured at top) came up a little short of the top individual honors in college golf.
Braden Thornberry, a sophomore at the University of Mississippi, earned the Haskins Award, which was voted on by players, coaches and selected members of the media. And Duke junior Leona Maguire captured the Annika Ward for the second time in three years.
Thornberry won five individual titles this past season, capped by earning the NCAA Division I individual championship. He also owned the lowest scoring average of the season (69.57).
Maguire, the top-ranked amateur in women’s golf, won three times individually and tied Kupcho for runner-up at the Women’s NCAA Finals last month at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Ill. Maguire had the best scoring average in women’s college golf (70.29), didn’t finish worse than sixth all season, and earlier won the national player of the year award from the Women’s Golf Coaches Association.
As for Kupcho (left), she likewise won three times individually — including at an NCAA Regional tournament — as a sophomore and looked like she was going to add a fourth at the biggest tournament of the year, the Women’s NCAA Finals. Alas, after holding a two-stroke lead with two holes left in her final round, she hit her short approach shot into the water and took a triple bogey on the 17th hole, dropping her from first to second place, behind eventual winner Monica Vaugn of Arizona State.
Kupcho, a three-time CWGA Player of the Year, recorded eight top-four finishes individually for the season, including the three wins and three runner-up showings. One of those second-place performances was at the ACC Championships, where Maguire beat the Coloradan. Kupcho put together that stellar record despite suffering a concussion in a freak accident at a February college tournament, which cost her her peak form for about a month.
Kupcho rebounded from her heartbreaking finish at the NCAA Finals to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Open for the second consecutive year.
Clark hadn’t won an individual college title before transferring from Oklahoma State to Oregon, but chalked up three in his final season of college golf. Most notably, that included claiming the Pac-12 Conference title in his home state at Boulder Country Club, where he also won the 2010 CGA Amateur. Three years after being named the Big 12 Player of the Year, he earned the Pac-12 POY honor.
Clark didn’t finish worse than 13th place individually this past season until the NCAA Finals, where he placed 51st.
Then in match play, Clark helped the defending national champion Ducks return to the title match of the NCAA Finals, but they lost to Oklahoma in the season finale. The Coloradan went 2-1 in his three matches at the NCAA Finals and was the only Oregon player to win his individual match against Oklahoma. Appropriately, he eagled his final hole to close out his college career.
The other finalists for the Haskins Award, besides Clark, were Thornberry and LSU sophomore Sam Burns. The Annika finalists, in addition to Kupcho, were Maguire and Stanford freshman Andrea Lee.
