By Mike May
Both Lance Ringler’s personal and professional lives are so intertwined with golf for the last 25 years, that it’s difficult imagining him involved in anything else.
Currently Ringler is involved in promoting, publicizing and organizing the Hoosier Amateur golf tournament. It is a 54-hole event, held every August at the new Pfau Course at Indiana University, featuring both male and female collegiate golfers.
“I started the Hoosier Amateur Golf Tournament during the pandemic, when college golf was cancelled.”
Ringler was born and still lives in Ellettsville, Indiana with his wife, who was herself a top collegiate golfer. He credits her with the inspiration to start the event.
“My start in golf came with my wife, who was a good junior, amateur golfer in her own right. She attended Iowa State on a golf scholarship. I also attended Iowa State after going to Vincennes Junior College. I worked in the athletic department at ISU in media relations and marketing, plus I spent one summer with the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) running events around the country. After that I worked as sportswriter at the Bloomington Herald-Times before heading out on the PGA Tour to caddy for Craig Bowden in 1997.”
After his caddy experience, Ringler expanded his horizons in the golf business. From 1998-1999, he was the assistant men’s and women’s golf coach at the University of Idaho and spent the 1999 fall season as an assistant at Iowa State.
He also worked with Jeff Sagarin to develop a golf ranking system and then sold it to Golfweek, where it became the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings.
“They brought me on full-time to manage the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings in 2000 and I have been with them, since then, but my job has evolved a lot. I now run more than a dozen events per year all over the country.”
He has covered every NCAA Division 1 men’s and women’s golf tournament since 2000, for Golfweek.
Another big event has also been added to his schedule for next year. He will serve as the Tournament Director for The National Golf Invitational (NGI), sponsored by Golfweek, to be held in May 2023, at the Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club in Maricopa, Arizona, just south of Phoenix.
In 2022, the NCAA approved for colleges and universities not in the NCAA Golf Tournament to play in an alternate end-of-season golf tournament.
“Think of it as the NIT of college golf.”
The NGI will feature both men and women, with a maximum of 18 teams, playing 54 holes of stroke play. The women will play from May 11-14 and the men will play the following week, which will be May 18-21.
The field will be invitational-only as decided by a committee using both the Golfweek/Sagarin and Golfstat rankings, along with a committee decision.
“This is something I have talked about for many years and am extremely excited to make this a reality. Many coaches over that time have expressed the desire and a need for a second post-season event like we see in other sports and the sport is ready to support another postseason tournament. With the NCAA’s approval for teams that don’t qualify for NCAA regional play, they can now have an option.”
When Ringler is not busy organizing golf tournaments and writing about them, he tries to find time to improve his seven handicap.
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