Bennett Awards Creates Custom Trophies for Top Junior Golf Tournament

Bennett Awards recently completed the production of a family of custom trophies for the world’s most prestigious junior golf tournament. The custom recognition trophies were created for the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley, a junior golf tournament that GolfWeek Magazine named the number one event of its kind.

This year’s event marked the second year of this annual tournament, which is held at the Sage Valley Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. The 2012 tournament featured 54 top junior amateur golfers from around the world, including 26 of the world’s top 30 highest ranked junior golfers. 15 different countries and 18 different states were represented in the field. The tournament featured an opening address by former President George W. Bush.

For this year’s event, and all tournaments moving forward, the tournament organizers wanted a new custom trophy that reflected the stature and prestige of the tournament itself. A design firm, Ocozzio Marketing and Design, was contracted to develop a new custom trophy design, which is named the Gibbs Trophy. Bennett Awards was then selected to create the actual custom recognition trophies based on this design. Bennett Awards, with its team of talented sculptors, including Terrie Bennett and Sean Slother, created two custom trophies using this design: a 36” perpetual trophy and an 18” winner’s trophy. The perpetual trophy will be displayed in the Sage Valley Golf Club clubhouse, and plaques will be added to the base each year indicating that year’s champion. Winner’s trophies will be given each year to the tournament champion. In addition, Bennett Awards created custom medallions that will be given to the tournament runner-up each year.

Both custom Gibbs Trophies feature three main components. The top component is a sculpted bronze golf ball, which has a flat ceramic disk embedded in it with the tournament name and logo. This golf ball has a diameter of 14.5” on the perpetual trophy. The middle component, also cast in bronze, is cylinder-shaped and features sculpted bas-relief images of Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, and the tournament’s inaugural champion, Nicholas Reach, receiving the tournament’s winner’s jacket from PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem. These two components are mounted on a hand-crafted walnut base that features alternating layers of light and dark wood.

The year’s tournament champion (pictured above with both Gibbs Trophies) was Zachary Olsen, 17, of Cordova, Tennessee.