There is a long list of successful amateurs who went on to have long and illustrious careers on the PGA Tour.
Tiger Woods set the amateur world alight with his incredible play in the mid-1990s, and Bryson DeChambeau, Viktor Hovland, and Matt Fitzpatrick are among today’s stars who have all won the US Amateur.
But for every amateur superstar that went on to win on the PGA Tour and claim major championships, there are five or more who it didn’t work out for. Take Byeong-hun An, for example. He was the youngest-ever winner of the US Amateur in 2009, but never won on the PGA Tour.
That’s also the case for a current LIV Golf reserve, who was the number one-ranked amateur for nearly an entire year before turning pro.
What happened to former number one-ranked amateur Ollie Schniederjans?
In the mid-2010s, if you were following amateur golf, there was one name on your mind: Ollie Schniederjans. He emerged from the powerhouse program at Georgia Tech and took the game by storm before turning pro.
He was known as much for his refusal to wear a hat as he was for his piercing stinger shots. He played the game with an infectious energy.
Schniederjans was a three-time All-American and won the Mark H. McCormack Medal, an honor reserved for the best amateur in the world. He held the title of the world’s best amateur for 41-straight weeks.
And when he arrived at the 2015 Open Championship at St. Andrews as an amateur, he forced his way into the headlines. He tied for 12th place, convincing the golfing world that this was the arrival of a future major champion.
Unfortunately, it never really worked out in the pros for Schniederjans. He climbed as high as 77th in the Official World Golf Ranking and narrowly missed out on a PGA Tour victory at the 2017 Wyndham Championship, losing by a single stroke to Henrik Stenson.
Then a combination of inconsistent form and gruelling physical setbacks, which saw him undergo double hip replacement surgery in 2022, stalled his momentum.
He’s now a LIV Golf reserve player, ready to step into the tournament lineups when a regular starter is sidelined through injury or illness. It’s not a role fitting of a player with the promise he showed.
How Ollie Schniederjans beat Bryson DeChambeau to a tournament win in 2025
There have been some flashes of Schniederjans’ former form in recent years, culminating in his beating LIV Golf superstar DeChambeau to win a tournament at the start of 2025.
He claimed victory at the International Series India, outdueling DeChambeau to win by four strokes. It was his first professional win in nearly a decade, and he won it with his brother Ben on the bag.
After years of injury troubles, Schniederjans is now a veteran player trying to find his way in a fragmented golf landscape.
He’ll hope that in years to come, he’ll be able to work his way onto the full LIV roster and play with some of the best on the planet once again.
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