Patrick Rodgers named to the 2011 Walker Cup team

Patrick's Porter Cup trophy

Stanford's incoming freshman Patrick Rodgers was named to the 2011 Walker Cup team.  The 2011 event will be held at Royal Aberdeen GC in Scotland.  Patrick, a native of Avon, Indiana, has had a brilliant summer following an outstanding junior golf career.  The backgrounder below by the USGA provides an excellent summary of Patrick's recent successes on the golf course.


Patrick becomes only the 9th Stanford University golfer to be named to a Walker Cup team, joining Charlie Seaver, Lawson Little, Mike Peck, Doug Clarke, Notah Begay, Tiger Woods, Joel Kribel and Phil Rowe (current Ass't Coach named to the Great Britain team).


First team All-American and rising junior Andrew Yun remains in the running for a Walker Cup spot this year.

The USGA's official Walker Cup website.  The USGA website includes the following backgrounder on Patrick:

Patrick Rodgers, 18, Avon, Ind. 

It has been a strong 2011 season for the incoming Stanford University freshman. Since graduating from high school in the spring, he has posted a slew of top-five finishes, highlighted by his come-from-behind victory at the Porter Cup at the end of July at Niagara Falls Country Club in Lewiston, N.Y. Rodgers posted rounds of 68-63-69-68 and then rolled in a 12-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole to edge Wesley Bryan for the title.

Rodgers also had runner-up finishes at the Players Amateur, Junior Invitational and Terra Cotta Invitational. He added a fourth-place finish in the Northeast Amateur and finished third at the Jones Cup Invitational. In early August, he finished second in the 72-hole stroke-play portion of the 109th Western Amateur at North Shore C.C. in suburban Chicago, but lost in the first round of the match-play portion of the competition to his future Stanford teammate, Andrew Yun, in 21 holes.

Rodgers won the Indiana State High School Championship as a junior in 2010 and is a two-time HP Scholastic All-American. He was named a First-Team Rolex Junior All-American in 2009 and 2010 by the American Junior Golf Association and was Honorable Mention in 2008. Rodgers’ AJGA résumé includes nine top-10 finishes and a win at the SAP Junior Open in 2009. He has played in three USGA championships, advancing to the round of 16 in the 2009 U.S. Junior Amateur, the round of 32 in the 2008 U.S. Junior and qualifying for the 2010 U.S. Amateur.

Academics are important to Rodgers, who ranked third in his class at Avon High School out of 582 students. He has written blogs about his experiences in junior golf for Golfweek magazine.  See the full news release from the USGA website.

Walker Cup Trophy