{"id":33052,"date":"2020-11-01T15:15:46","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T20:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=33052"},"modified":"2024-12-10T09:49:15","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T14:49:15","slug":"golfer-natalie-srinivasan-20-named-national-player-of-the-year-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/golfer-natalie-srinivasan-20-named-national-player-of-the-year-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Golfer Natalie Srinivasan \u201920 Named National Player of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

IT WAS ALREADY NEXT-TO-IMPOSSIBLE\u00a0to crown the best player in the decorated history of Furman women\u2019s golf.\u00a0Natalie Srinivasan \u201920<\/strong>\u00a0isn\u2019t helping.<\/p>\n

In May, Srinivasan capped a stellar senior season by\u00a0winning the 2020 Golfweek ANNIKA Award<\/a>, given annually since 2014 to the nation\u2019s top female collegiate golfer. It marked her second national player of the year honor this season, coming on the heels of being named the 2020\u00a0Division I PING WGCA National Player of the Year.<\/a>\u00a0She has since won Southern Conference\u00a0Female Athlete of the Year.<\/p>\n

Doing something nobody has ever done in a program that boasts one of Furman\u2019s two national championships and has produced the likes of World Golf Hall of Famers\u00a0Betsy King \u201977<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Beth Daniel \u201978<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0isn\u2019t easy, something Srinivasan is still putting into perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought that I would win national player of the year, and I am so grateful to have my name up with the best players to have played college golf,\u201d says Srinivasan, a Spartanburg, South Carolina, native. \u201cWe have such amazing alumnae \u2013 Beth, Betsy,\u00a0Cindy (Davis \u201984)<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Dottie (Pepper \u201987)<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 and it\u2019s such an honor to be considered in the same category. Winning national player of the year is something I\u2019ve always dreamed about, and it\u2019s so cool to be able to represent Furman this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Srinivasan becomes only the fifth Furman athlete in any sport to earn a national player of the year honor, and the first woman. She joins\u00a0Frank Selvy \u201954<\/strong>\u00a0(1954, basketball),\u00a0Brad Faxon \u201983<\/strong>\u00a0(1982, golf),\u00a0Jeff Blankenship \u201990<\/strong>\u00a0(1988, football) and\u00a0Louis Ivory \u201902<\/strong>\u00a0(2000, football).<\/p>\n

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\"Srinivasan<\/p>\n

Srinivasan stands with the ANNIKA award at the REK Center for Intercollegiate Golf.\/Photo: Jeremy Fleming<\/p>\n

The ANNIKA award, named in honor of golfing great Annika Sorenstam, is chosen by a vote of current players, coaches and members of the golf media and was announced live on The Golf Channel by Sorenstam. The winner receives an exemption to compete in the 2021 Evian Championship, one of the LPGA Tour\u2019s five major tournaments.<\/p>\n

Srinivasan also became the\u00a0seventh first-team All-American in Furman women\u2019s golf history<\/a>,\u00a0thanks to a year in which she won three tournaments, the most in the nation, and\u00a0finished second<\/a>\u00a0by a stroke in the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate. The Darius Rucker Intercollegiate is considered the most competitive regular-season tournament in the country.Srinivasan set a school record with a 70.8 stroke average and was the nation\u2019s\u00a0top-ranked player, according to Golfstat<\/a>,\u00a0when the team\u2019s season was cut short in mid-March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201cWhat she accomplished prior to that was amazing,\u201d Furman Athletics Director Jason Donnelly says.<\/p>\n

Srinivasan\u2019s 72.6 career stroke average is also a Furman record. A three-time All-Southern Conference selection and the 2018 SoCon Player of the Year, Srinivasan finished tied for 17th at the\u00a0i<\/a>naugural Augusta National Women\u2019s Amateur<\/a>\u00a0in 2019 and competed in the 2017 U.S. Women\u2019s Open as an amateur.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s one of the hardest workers you\u2019ll ever see \u2026 For her it\u2019s all about school and golf, and her mental toughness and strength is as good as anybody\u2019s,\u201d says Furman coach Jeff Hull. \u201cWhat happened this year is what happens to most good athletes when they keep working. They make mistakes, and they learn from their mistakes, and they keep growing.\u201d<\/p>\n

A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Srinivasan was also an exceptional student, boasting a near-perfect grade-point average while majoring in health sciences. She was the recipient of the Winston Babb Memorial Award, which is given by the Furman Chapter of Omicron Delta Kappa to the woman in each class who has demonstrated the most outstanding qualities of leadership, scholarship and service to the university.<\/p>\n

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Srinivasan (left) photographed in March of 2020. The base ANNIKA award shows Srinivasan\u2019s name among previous winners.\/Photos: Jeremy Fleming<\/em><\/p>\n

The accolades have softened the blow of seeing the season end so abruptly, but Srinivasan would rather be leading the Furman program to its 20th trip to the NCAA championships right about now. Missing the chance to see what she could have accomplished while playing so well will always sting.<\/p>\n

\u201cNat is very calm and very strong mentally,\u201d Hull says. \u201cAnd she said, \u2018I felt like I could win nationals.\u2019 She could have won the Augusta tournament as well, because she was and still is playing at such a high level. That is what is so disappointing, just the opportunity that was lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NCAA\u2019s decision to grant all spring sports athletes an extra year of eligibility means Srinivasan could come back for one more year at Furman, but she intends to pursue a professional career.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce our tournament (the Briar\u2019s Creek Invitational originally scheduled for March 16-17 in Charleston), got canceled, I started preparing myself for the worst, and it ended up happening,\u201d she says. \u201cBut there are so many positives I can take from this year. I played really good golf. A lot of things I\u2019ve been working on kind of came together. I know I\u2019ll miss the girls on the team, because we\u2019re very close, but it\u2019s not like I can\u2019t talk to them. \u2026 It\u2019s not the end of golf for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IT WAS ALREADY NEXT-TO-IMPOSSIBLE\u00a0to crown the best player in the decorated history of Furman women\u2019s golf.\u00a0Natalie Srinivasan \u201920\u00a0isn\u2019t helping. In May, Srinivasan capped a stellar senior season by\u00a0winning the 2020 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":33053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2892,1963,2896],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2020","category-furman-magazine","category-notes-from-the-field-fall-2020"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33052"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35545,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33052\/revisions\/35545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}