Two years ago, Ollie Schniederjans called it a “long-term play.”
He was on the verge of returning to competitive golf, at the Korn Ferry Tour event in Savannah, Georgia in March 2023. It marked his first tournament action since January 2022, as a slew of injuries, all stemming from a bothersome left hip, had limited him to just five rounds in the preceding 18 months.
Patient and introspective, Schniederjans wasn’t about to make some big proclamation.
“I can’t treat it like nothing happened yet,” Schniederjans said then. “I’m still building up, and it’s still very fresh in process.”
The revival had its highs and lows – six top-25s in 24 starts the next two seasons on the KFT, but also 12 missed cuts. Schniederjans, the former top-ranked amateur in the world while at Georgia Tech who had risen as high as No. 77 as a pro, lost his status, but not his will.
He eventually redirected his comeback path internationally, teeing it up in LIV Golf’s Promotions, a joint-fourth showing earning him a reserve spot on the Saudi-backed tour and exemptions into the Asian Tour’s International Series, where the 31-year-old Schniederjans debuted at this week’s event at DLF Golf and Country Club in New Delhi, India.
Now, he can finally declare himself back.
Schniederjans ran away from a field that included Bryson DeChambeau, Joaquin Niemann and Abraham Ancer, shooting 10 under and winning his first professional event since the KFT’s 2016 Air Capital Classic.
“It means a lot to me,” Schniederjans said Sunday. “This golf course is very challenging, and back in the day I would have had a hard time out here, so to come out and shoot those scores now, with everything I have been through, my game is a lot better than it ever was. This was proof this week.”
DeChambeau, the reigning U.S. Open champion, was Schniederjans’ closest challenger; he eagled his first hole of the final round, the par-5 18th, after players completed their third rounds on Sunday morning (Round 3 was a shotgun start on Saturday). But Schniederjans – who had his brother Ben, a former pitcher at Georgia Tech, on the bag – stretched his lead to five shots with nine holes to play, chipped in from the edge of some thick vegetation at the par-4 13th to increase it to six, and then despite playing his last five holes in 1 over, still left DeChambeau four shots back – and shellshocked.
“I have been hitting it so well,” DeChambeau said. “I played a Break 50 [round for YouTube] and was hitting it so well. I don’t know what happened.”
Schniederjans, who racked up four top-3s on the PGA Tour before losing his card in 2018-19, didn’t hit a shot for seven months in 2022 as he rehabbed from surgeries on both hips. The operations had to be done one at a time, and two months apart, but the time away allowed Schniederjans to restore his body – his tight hips had for years put pressure on his neck, back, obliques and shoulders – and his golf swing.
When at his best before all the injuries, Schniederjans was very much an equal of fellow Class of 2011 recruits Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. He was twice a first-team All-American for the Yellow Jackets, and he totaled six wins among 27 top-10s in four seasons. In 2015, he became just the third amateur since 1960 to make the cut in both the U.S. Open and Open Championship, joining Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus.
Through his recovery, Schniederjans never really worried about whether he’d ever get right. His supreme confidence never left him.
“I’ve been able to stay very patient and present with my process, and I pretty much take it one day at a time,” Schniederjans explained in 2023. “Look, obviously my intentions are to be great and to be out there and to do what those guys (Spieth and Thomas) are doing. I’ve had that intention since I was 14 years old, and that’s never going to change. But I’ve been able to focus on what I need to do, and I have a vision for long term where I want to be.
“I know I want to do this for a long time, and I want to do it the right way.”
The right way has led to this.
Sure, winning on the Asian Tour is just one small step, but Schniederjans, for once, is healthy enough to take more.
“There were setbacks that took me years to get to this point,” Schniederjans added Sunday. “This year has been good, I have been able to be on the course all year for a year now. I’ve been able to put everything together, and I knew something like this was coming.”
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