American tour professional Andy Ogletree chalked up the first professional victory of his career after winning the Asian Tour’s International Series Egypt at Madinaty Golf Club.
The 24-year-old 2019 US Amateur champion is currently suspended from the PGA Tour after playing in the LIV Golf event held in London in June. Although he was not a member of the PGA Tour when he played at Centurion – where he finished last and won ¢120,000 – Ogletree was issued with a six-month ban from entering future PGA Tour events.
Having since been dropped by LIV Golf following the signing of more high-profile players, the former Georgia Tech graduate was left with nowhere to play, so joined the Asian Tour, which has an affiliation with LIV Golf, taking part in events in Singapore, Korea and Morocco, before finally finding success in Egypt.
Ogletree, who shot a final-round 62 to beat fellow LIV player Bernd Wiesberger by four shots, said: “This is amazing, just incredible. I have always been a huge fan of match play, and that is kind of what it came to in the end; it was basically a two-horse race. I just tried to keep matching what Bernd was doing, and fortunately I kept making a lot of putts.”
Having missed out on winning his PGA Tour card at last year’s Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School, Ogletree has no regrets about taking up LIV Golf’s offer earlier in the year.
“It gave me somewhere to play. It gave me the opportunity to get into the Asian Tour as well,” he said. “My big thing was I just wanted a guaranteed place to play. I didn’t feel I was getting better playing Monday qualifiers for PGA Tour events or playing the mini tours. What presented itself was LIV. It definitely helped that I was able to make some money and was able to fund what I was doing for the rest of the year.”
The Mississippi-born player now has the option of playing more Asian Tour events or returning to the US to try and Monday qualify for PGA Tour events once his suspension ends next month.