It has been quite a year for OB Angus Flanagan (H 12-17). The University of Minnesota student has gone from strength to strength despite the delay in the 2019-20 season due to the global pandemic, winning three individual titles and receiving an invitation to make his PGA competition debut as a result.
The third-year ‘Gopher’, the moniker for the university’s sports teams and players, finished the autumn season ranked 38th in the country according to Golfweek’s Men’s Collegiate Golf Individual rankings.
He led his university team to a first win in five years in the Macdonald Cup by securing victory at the tournament and followed this up with another top-10 finish at the Tavistock Collegiate Invitational where he finished tied for seventh. During this run he shot the most consecutive rounds under par in the past 25 years for his university team with nine straight.
After the recent restart, Angus won the Minnesota State Open, shooting a course-record 64 in his final round. Thanks to his performance he received an exemption to play in the PGA Tour’s 3M Open which was being held in Blaine, Minnesota where he played alongside some of the world’s best players.
Following his PGA debut, Angus came through on the final day of stroke play to achieve medalist honours at the Western Amateur.
He became the second Englishman to win the Cameron Eddy Trophy, recording an 11 under-par score helped in no small part by a final round 66, the joint lowest of the competition, giving him a 1-shot victory.
Speaking after his two rounds at the 3M Open Angus said, “Seeing this makes the dream come true and makes it more real for me. It’s definitely going to push me to keep practising and doing what I’m doing every day because I’m definitely seeing improvements in my game.”
“Overall, it’s just a learning experience for me…I’m playing against the guys I’ve always looked up to. I played with Tom Lewis, who’s a fellow English guy. Seeing how he plays the game and he’s ranked…I think he’s top-70 in the world, so there’s not too much difference between my game and his game, but at the end of the day he just holed a couple more putts than I did and easily made the cut, so that was good to see.”
