Alison Lee

2014 - UCLA

Alison Lee of UCLA is the winner of the very first ANNIKA Award which 3M proudly presents to the nation’s top female collegiate golfer.

Lee, a first-team All-American and Pac-12 Player of the Year as a freshman, adds the ANNIKA Award to her growing resume after sweeping a vote of Division I golfers, college coaches and members of the golf media.

The award is an initiative of the Fred Haskins Commission and ANNIKA Foundation and is managed with the help of Golfweek. Oversight is provided by the Haskins Commission, which for 44 years has given out the Haskins Award to the outstanding male collegiate player.

Lee’s record last season at UCLA was impeccable. She set a single-season scoring record for the Bruins, led the country with a 71.0 stroke average and was a cumulative 22-under-par.

She won the Betsy Rawls, the Stanford Invitational and the Pac-12 Championships and finished in the Top 10 in nine of the 11 events she started. She was honored as Freshman of the Year by the Pac-12 and the WGCA.

She came to UCLA from Valencia, Calif., after a sparkling junior career. She was a six-time AJGA All-American and a nine-time winner on the AJGA circuit. Lee helped the USA to three straight victories at the Junior Solheim Cup and was a member of two Junior Ryder Cup teams.

When votes for the inaugural ANNIKA Award were counted, it was Annika who delivered the news to Lee. This was not the first time they had met. The young Californian won the 2012 ANNIKA Invitational — a victory she calls a turning point in her young career.

“I still remember winning the tournament … I had always been in contention and on leaderboards and finishing top 10 in other events but could never win. The ANNIKA Invitational was really the turning point because in my opinion, in order to be a great successful golfer, you have to learn how to win and the ANNIKA Invitational was a big step for me,” Lee said.

Annika is proud that Lee is the first winner of an award that bears her name. “She is a great young player at UCLA, who I got to know when she won our AJGA tournament a few years ago. I’m very happy for her.”