Columbia Ph.D. Candidate, 2022 Byron Nelson Award Winner Knauth Set for USGA Debut

Like the other 263 competitors in the 44th U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship, golf is not a top priority for William Knauth. Among the many interesting storylines this championship’s field will bring to Troon Country Club and stroke-play co-host Troon North Golf Club, the New York, N.Y., resident’s is truly unique.

How many guys can claim they are working towards a Ph.D. in statistics at Columbia University, won the Byron Nelson Award as a self-taught, former walk-on at NCAA Division III Carnegie Mellon University and were talented enough to play the violin with a variety of symphonic orchestras in high school?

He’s Itzhak Perlman and Sir Isaac Newton with a short game.

Just trying to sneak in practice time for golf events can be tricky for Knauth, a Williamsport, Pa., native who has to convince his superiors at Columbia that he’s not neglecting his two-year research project for high-level competitions. His work, which includes teaching one Masters-level statistics course per semester, occupies as much as 60 hours per week. All together, his schedule leaves little time for range sessions at Inwood Country Club, located just southeast of John F. Kennedy Airport.

But Knauth, who was attempting to get the first draft of his paper and oral presentation completed prior to departing for Scottsdale, Ariz., somehow manages to make it work.

“My advisor (Michael E. Sobel) expects me to do extra work on the weekends,” said Knauth, whose project in process theory function, originally expected to take a few months, is nearly two years old because of some different results that came up as he gathered data. “It’s a year-round thing. The research picks up over the summer because not much else is going on [at Columbia].”

Knauth’s schedule got much more hectic after he qualified for his first USGA championship on July 28, shooting a 4-under 68 at the Apawamis Club, in Rye, N.Y., to earn medalist honors. A year ago, in his first year of U.S. Mid-Amateur eligibility, the now-26-year-old wound up missing the deadline after all the available spots in the Metropolitan New York area filled up. This year, he set his alarm for 9 a.m. on April 16 – the day entries opened – to make sure he got the Apawamis site, which filled up in 10 minutes.

He was joined by his girlfriend, Liz Shim, a Fordham grad hoping to enter medical school, who happened to be a first-time looper that day. Knauth managed to shoot 6 under par through 11 holes before settling for his 68.

“I was officially in Tommy Fleetwood territory,” said Knauth laughing. “I had that thought. There were some tricky holes coming up. I just had to try and get through those holes and not freak if I started making bogeys. I knew I had a cushion [playing in the afternoon wave]. I made a few bogeys coming in, but I had [played well] enough to be medalist.

“I took stock in my golfing life. [Qualifying for] a USGA championship is the last thing I can die happy with. I had the U.S. Mid-Am circled.”

Knauth’s journey to this week’s championship in Arizona started 18 years ago on a family trip to northern Wisconsin, where his grandparents wanted him to see a local historic site. Turns out, when they arrived, the location was closed, but they didn’t leave right away, because the perceptive 8-year-old Knauth noticed something: There was a golf course on the property. He turned to his parents and asked if they could go see it. None of his family played the game. Still, a benevolent pro shop staff member obliged by giving him some balls and a 3-iron.

Knauth was immediately hooked. He had played baseball at the time, but every time he was on the diamond, he wanted to be at the golf course. So, his parents eventually gave him $200 to be a junior member at White Deer Golf Course, so he could spend every summer moment at the local muni. It would become his home throughout high school.

“The people at the golf course became my adopted family,” he said. “I was the kid who was dropped off at 6 a.m. and picked up at dark.”

At the time, Knauth was also an accomplished violinist, a vocation he started at age 5. He was proficient enough – winters in Pennsylvania meant being indoors – to land gigs with local symphonies, playing concertos and concert symphonies with the best adults in the region. The money he earned fueled his golf addiction enough for him to buy a $175-per-year range pass.

He briefly thought about following his music to places like the Julliard School or Curtis Institute of Music, but he burned out by the end of high school. Practicing six to seven hours a day got monotonous.

Golf, however, did not. The problem was he didn’t have much on his tournament résumé to merit being recruited by any school. His parents didn’t have the funds to ship him around the country to play in top American Junior Golf Association events, and he didn’t qualify for events such as the U.S. Junior Amateur.

But he was an outstanding student, especially in math. In elementary school, he was strong enough in the subject to test out of that year’s classes. He started taking algebra classes in grammar school, and by his senior year of high school, Knauth had taken all levels of calculus –something often reserved for college students.

Knauth, however, did want to play golf in college. Discussions with the UCLA coach nearly led him to the Los Angeles campus for a tryout with the team. But he fell in love with Carnegie Mellon, one of the top institutions in the country, especially for his planned major(s?): math and physics.

There was one problem. He had trouble convincing the coach he was worthy of a tryout. During a campus visit, he ran into the school’s athletic director – the conversation went so well that he sent a note to the golf coach, who was out of town with the women’s team at the time and asked him to consider sending Knauth an email.

Once he tried out, Knauth’s game was good enough to crack the starting lineup as a freshman. A few months later, the team was at a Chick-Fil-A in the Charlotte, N.C., airport en route to a tournament in Florida when the coach told Knauth, “I wasn’t going to email you back. I’m glad it worked out.”

Then the coach told his assistant, “Isn’t it funny, six months ago this kid didn’t exist and now he’s on a plane with us.”

Four years later, Knauth emerged as one of the best players in CMU history, becoming a two-time Division III All-American and the recipient of one of college golf’s most prestigious honors.

But it didn’t come without some struggles. During his sophomore year, Knauth was spraying the ball everywhere and was left off the roster for a fall event. Then COVID-19 hit and everything shut down, which became a blessing in disguise. Knauth spent the summer of 2020 working as hard on his game as his academics.

The last piece to fall into place was the putter. It got so bad on the greens that Knauth went to a local Dick’s Sporting Goods prior to his senior season in 2021-22 and tried out every putter on display. Once he found one, his game started to flourish. His strokes-gained putting decreased from minus-5 to minus-1. He tied for eighth in his first event with the new implement. He would finish no worse than T-8 that entire fall, posting a stroke average of 70.2.

By the spring, he was named a finalist for the Byron Nelson Award, an honor given annually to a senior who not only shows proficiency on the course, but also in the classroom and community. Only two other non-Division I golfers had won it prior to 2022, and just one in Division III.

The finalists for the award that year included USGA champion/USA Walker Cupper Cole Hammer (Texas) and Trent Phillips (Georgia). At first, Knauth thought he was a “diversity” selection. As a statistics maven, he placed his odds close to winning the lottery. But the more he delved into the honor, his golf exploits – albeit on a lower level than his Division I cohorts – matched up favorably.

His grade-point average of 3.83 was strong, as was his work in the community. Through his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, he discovered Iron Phi, a philanthropic charity that has raised more than $5 million through 53,000-plus donations in support of fighting Lou Gehrig Disease (ALS).

Knauth also did well in his interview with the Byron Nelson Award Committee. They threw him a slight curveball, but he was able to come up with a thoughtful answer.

“What was the last book you read that impacted your life?” said Knauth, recalling the question. “I was not prepared for the question because I don’t read that much. I have my nose in books [for school]. But I came up with this answer.

“Jeanne-Paul Sartre wrote [a doctrine] called Existentialism is a Humanism. It [reads] like a Sunday sermon. I’m not a religious person, but with this book, it discussed decisions that I struggled with. Once I read that book, I found peace in those decisions. Basically, it is creating your own morality with every decision you make. All you can ever ask is do the best you can at every moment as long as you are honest with yourself.

“That message really centered me. I am leading my life a lot more in that way. It turned me into that person who could have won this award.”

While competing in the NCAA Division III Championship in Florida, Knauth received word he had won the Byron Nelson Award, which came with a sponsor’s exemption into the 2023 AT&T Byron Nelson at TPC McKinney Ranch in the Dallas area. Knauth missed the cut (79-71), but he didn’t go into the event with high expectations. He was nearly a year into his post-graduate work at Columbia and didn’t have much time to prepare for the May event.

But through his involvement with Iron Phi, he raised money for the charity.

“I was doing my small part,” he said. “Not just frat members do it. Sorority sweethearts get involved as well as other members of the community.”

Later that fall, Knauth whetted his appetite for the U.S. Mid-Amateur by caddying for friend Jon Sherman at Sleepy Hollow Country Club.  Just being around the championship that week got Knauth energized about someday qualifying for the event. Sherman was one of the first people he called after getting into this year’s field. “I’m just following in your footsteps,” Knauth told him.

Another buddy, Texan Scott Fawcett, also qualified, and the two are planning to room together in Arizona. Knauth won’t be the first Ph.D. candidate to compete in the championship. Brent Patterson, who earned his doctorate in economics at Ole Miss, advanced to the semifinals at Sleepy Hollow in 2023. Kimberly Dinh, who earned her Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is an engineer at Dow Chemical in Michigan, won the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur the same year. Both, however, played Division I golf at Middle Tennessee State and Wisconsin, respectively.

Neither won the Byron Nelson Award, though, nor performed with their local symphonic orchestras.

“I’m excited,” said Knauth, who failed to qualify for match play in this year's Met Amateur and missed the 36-hole cut in the Met Open. “I’ve never really played serious desert golf before. That same trip where I got the 3-iron from the pro shop guy we were out west at Zion National Park [in Utah] staying at a Best Western. They had a nine-hole par-3 course and I’m not 100 percent sure it was part of the hotel. But the [Wisconsin] pro shop guy gave me a putter and some balls to take with me and I started whacking [the ball] around. It was my first time on a golf course.

“I know this time it will be hard to win with just a putter.”

Nobody needs to be a statistics professor to know 13 additional implements will be added to the bag. Knauth just hopes the numbers on his scorecard add up to a successful week.

David Shefter is a senior staff writer at the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.