NOGA Updates Player of the Year Points Awarded in 2025

The Northern Ohio Golf Association has changed its Amateur and Senior Player of the Year Points Lists for the 2025 Great Lakes Auto Scratch Series season.

Following the fall meeting of the NOGA Tournament Players Advisory Committee, the Committee agreed upon two ideas and built those ideas into the structure of the two points lists: the need to include more of the top tournaments in Northern Ohio in the awarding of points, and having more emphasis placed on NOGA’s two most important tournaments, the Northeast Ohio Amateur Championship and the NOGA Tour Championship.

With those two ideas in mind, the NOGA Player of the Year Points Lists will see the following changes for the 2025 season:

• The Northeast Ohio Amateur Championship and the NOGA Tour Championship now provide an equal number of points, and both are double the number of points players earn in any one-day NOGA Scratch Series tournament;

• The Cleveland Amateur, Stark County Amateur, and Summit County Amateur now join the Ohio Open and the Ohio Amateur offering 150% of the points of a one-day NOGA Scratch Series tournament. These multi-round tournaments are now worth more than any one-day NOGA Scratch Series tournament but less than the Northeast Ohio Amateur Championship and the NOGA Tour Championship;

• The list of points-eligible USGA Qualifying tournaments now includes the U.S. Mid-Amateur, U.S. Senior Amateur, and U.S. Senior Open, awarding points both for qualifying and then advancing in the National Championship;

• All open or amateur tournaments that offer points will award points for their Senior counterpart – i.e., Ohio Senior Open, Ohio Senior Amateur, Senior Stark County Am, Senior Cleveland Am, etc.;

• For the Senior Player of the Year Points list, players must be age 55 or older to receive points in non-NOGA tournaments, with the overall senior amateur results used to award those points (i.e. nothing awarded for age division results).

Because of its team-limited field and non-open entry, the NOGA Interclub Championship remains the only Scratch Series tournament that does not award POY points.

Players must play in at least three NOGA Scratch Series tournaments that offer Player of the Year Points to be eligible for the NOGA Tour Championship. At the end of the regular season in September, the top 15 players from the Player of the Year and Senior Player of the Year points lists are invited to the NOGA Tour Championship at Firestone Country Club.

Following the conclusion of the Tour Championship, NOGA will crown the Player of the Year and Senior Player of the Year winners. Those two Players of the Year are then named as captains of their teams for the Lewis Cup. Then, NOGA invites the top players from the Player of the Year and Senior Player of the Year points lists to compete in the Lewis Cup, with invitations made in order of points earned until identifying a 12-player team for each side.