Vanderbilt Men’s Golf will be represented proudly at this summer’s Palmer Cup, as senior Will Gordon and junior John Augenstein will join head coach Scott Limbaugh on the U.S. Palmer Cup Men’s Team in an announcement made on the Golf Channel on Wednesday evening. Gordon will be making his second appearance as a Palmer Cup member, while Augenstein will be representing the United States for the first time. Limbaugh will serve as the co-captain of the United States team, and will also have one final captain’s pick on May 3.
The annual Ryder Cup-style competition will be played June 7-9 at the Alotian Club in Little Rock, Ark. and will be the first to be played in the United States to include men’s and women’s USA collegiate golfers against their counterparts from around the world.
Gordon, who also made the U.S. team in 2016, has played in 18 rounds this season and has posted a stroke average of 69.33, claimed two individual titles and three top five finishes so far in 2018-19. The senior from Davidson, N.C. won back-to-back tournaments at the Tavistock Collegiate Invitational and the Gator Invitational earlier this season, and finished fifth at the Carmel Cup, which takes place at the Pebble Beach Golf Links. For his career, Gordon has won four individual titles.
Augenstein has also played in 18 rounds this season and has a stroke average of 71.06. The junior from Owensboro, Ky. has one top five finish at the Tavistock Collegiate Invitational and a top 10 finish at the Carmel Cup at Pebble Beach. He also has one career win, which came at last year’s Mason Rudolph Championship at the Vanderbilt Legends Club.
Gordon and Augenstein’s selections to the Palmer Cup are the seventh and eighth for Vanderbilt as a program and the Commodores now have six selections in the last five years. Gordon joins Matthias Schwab and Luke List as the only Vanderbilt players to be named to the Palmer Cup twice, with List making the United States team in 2006 and 2007 and Schwab making the European team in 2015 and 2016.
In 2016, Schwab was selected by both teams to receive the Arnold Palmer Cup exemption into the 2017 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard. Players selected the individual from both teams that they think best represents the “Arnold Palmer Legacy,” that is, the values that Arnold Palmer exhibited through his life in golf.
