ROCKY FACE, Ga. — There must be something about The Farm Golf Club that the Schniederjans family enjoys. Two years after his older brother Ollie won his second consecutive individual title at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic, Georgia Tech freshman Luke Schniederjans fired a three-round score of 11-under-par to win in his first collegiate golf tournament in Rocky Face on Sunday.

“It’s super cool to win it after (Ollie) won it and that’s four years in a row now a Georgia Tech player has won here because Jacob Joiner won last year,” Schniederjans said. “A lot of people go four years without winning a tournament. To get one right away, I’m going to soak it in. It’s really cool.”

Virginia won the team championship as the Cavaliers in record fashion, smashing the tournament record of 23-under by eight strokes. The Cavaliers — ranked 21st in the Golf Coaches Association of America top 25 — were led by Derek Bard, who finished tied for second individually at 10-under after shooting a 69 on Sunday. Virginia finished six shots ahead of defending champion Auburn.

Schniederjans didn’t come into the tournament with anywhere close to the same level of recognition as his older brother. Ollie Schniederjans was the No. 1 ranked amateur in the world when he won in 2014, while Luke is currently ranked 3,907th in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, although he certainly will take a big jump after his victory.

“They are very different in their physical development,” Georgia Tech coach Bruce Heppler said. “Ollie was very into strength training in high school and when he got to college he was already one of the strongest guys I’ve ever had. Luke has been a late bloomer physically but over the last year and a half he has grown four inches and has gotten bigger and stronger.

“His improvement the last 12 months has been as big as I’ve seen. You don’t expect a guy to come in and win his first tournament, but anyone who has seen his results the last 12 months knows that he has showed up playing better in college than Ollie did. It’s exciting for him.”

Schniederjans actually competed as an individual this week. Georgia Tech coach Bruce Heppler uses a unique in-house tournament to decide the Jacket’s lineup for this event each season. This year that meant that all 11 players on the roster played in a match-play round robin against the other 10 golfers. The winner of each match play received a point, and if it was tied each player received a half point. At the end, the five with most points were on the roster and the sixth, in this case Schniederjans, competed as an individual at The Farm.

The Carpet Capital’s defending individual champion, Jacob Joiner, was left out as a result and if Schniederjan’s scores had counted, Georgia Tech would have shot 18 strokes better as a team and would have finished second instead of fifth. However, Heppler believes in his system and thinks that is the best way to decide which players to bring.

“I find a lot of times the best way to get better is to let them fight amongst themselves,” Heppler said. “It’s a new year and we had a guy who won the tournament last year. A lot of coaches might just bring him so he could defend his title. But I’ve always felt like the PGA Tour starts the year every year with everyone at $0, so that’s the approach we have as well.”

Schniederjans wasted no time getting out to a hot start in his collegiate debut. He birdied four of his first five holes and shot 4-under on the back nine after starting the first round Friday on hole 10. Throughout the tournament, Schniederjans shot 10-under on the back nine and just 1-under on the front.

On Friday, Schniederjans shot 1-over on the front to finish with a 69, and then came back with a 66 on Saturday to enter the final round tied with Ryan Benton of Auburn for the individual lead.

Schniederjans shot his highest score of the weekend on Sunday, but played his only bogey-free round with birdies on No. 3 and No. 12 to go with 16 pars.

“I tried not to speculate (before the final round) and just wanted to keep doing what I was doing,” Schniederjans said. “I felt like my game had been pretty good, so I didn’t want to get ahead of myself and just tried to stay focused. I didn’t hit as many greens today, but I made a lot of par saves. It was definitely more of a grind, which always feels better and I made a lot of par putts. Probably my best shot of the day was a 3-foot slider for par on the next-to-last hole.”

Bard made a tremendous run down the stretch to put himself in contention for the individual title. He entered the day two-strokes back of the lead and played 1-over on the front nine. But four birdies in the first six holes on the back side brought him to within one stroke before a costly bogey on 16.

Bard holed a 20-foot putt on 17 to give himself a chance on the final hole, but an unlucky bounce on his approach shot and a bad lie meant he knew he was out of the running. He made a 15-foot putt for par to seal the Cavaliers’ victory.

It was the first time Virginia had come to the Carpet Capital since 2001. The Cavaliers winning score was 35-strokes ahead of Auburn’s 4-over-288 last year. Coaches from several schools commented on how much easier the course played this year from previous tournaments and Sargent thought the lack of experience with the course helped his team.

“It’s an incredible course but we haven’t played here in the 13 years that I’ve been coaching,” Sargent said. “I think that helped us in a lot of ways. This year the tournament was a little easier than most year. I think we played a little more aggressive than most teams and it paid off.”

Clemson finished in third at 16-under, followed by LSU (-12), Georgia Tech (-8), Florida (-8), Tennessee (+1), Kennesaw State (+3), Alabama (+10), South Carolina (+11), North Florida (+25), Dalton State (+25), Chattanooga (+26) and Memphis (+36). 

Phillips Knowles of the University of North Florida shot 67 on Sunday to finish tied with Bard and Benton at 10-under for second place individually, followed by Clemson’s Bryson Nimmer (-9), Virginia’s Thomas Walsh (-8), Florida’s Sam Horsfield (-8), LSU’s Sam Burns (-8), Kennesaw State’s Wyatt Larkin (-7) and Auburn’s Will Long (-7) to round out the top 10.