Fifty-nine watches don’t happen on mini tours. They exist in a Golf Twitter vacuum except for a tiny legion of hard-core enthusiasts. There are no scoreboards. Guys turn in their scorecards at the end and a calligraphist puts pen to cardboard and then everyone knows what they shot. Sometimes, even the players themselves don’t exactly know their score when they walk off the final hole, even if they’ve reached golf’s magic number.
Former Georgia Tech standout Luke Schniederjans made 11 birdies and shot 59 on Wednesday in the second round of the GPro Tour’s Mimosa Challenge in Morganton, N.C. But he apparently wasn’t aware of the sub-60 score, thinking that Mimosa Hills Country Club played to a par of 71. It is a 70.
Playing partner Brad Fritsch is the one who outed Schniederjans’ brain cramp with a playful tweet.
Schniederjans birdied every hole on his front nine except the par-4 fourth. He “slumped” on the back with five straight pars before draining three consecutive birdies. He needed only a par at 18 to shoot 59 and pulled it off. Schniederjans improved by a whopping 12 shots from his first round on the Donald Ross-designed course that opened in 1929. The 59 didn’t get him into the lead. He trails leader Jared Bettcher by two shots heading into the final round.
The younger brother of pro golfer and three-time All-American Ollie Schniederjans, a one-time winner on the Korn Ferry Tour, Luke Schniederjans graduated from Georgia Tech in 2020 as a three-time All-ACC player. He got a PGA Tour start this year in the 2020-21 season opener, the Safeway Classic in early September, but didn’t make the cut.
This is Schniederjans’ first start this year on the GPro Tour, established as a Southeast circuit in 2013. The total purse for the Mimosa Challenge is $55,600, with a first prize of $10,000.