Among top US amateur golfers for decades, Bill Ploeger dies on Columbus course
William D. “Bill” Ploeger, who for decades was among the nation’s top amateur and senior amateur golfers, died Wednesday doing what he loved.
Ploeger, 85, collapsed while playing golf at Green Island County Club in Columbus and was taken to Piedmont Columbus Regional’s midtown emergency room, where he was pronounced dead at 1:27 p.m., Muscogee County coroner Buddy Bryan told the Ledger-Enquirer.
The cause of death is cardial failure due to complications of coronary artery disease, Bryan said.
Bystanders immediately started CPR on Ploeger after they couldn’t find a pulse and he was unresponsive, Bryan said. EMS tried to resuscitate Ploeger in the ambulance, and efforts to save him continued for 23 minutes in the ER before he was pronounced dead, according to a hospital report that Bryan read to the L-E.
Striffler-Hamby Mortuary has announced the visitation for family and friends will be Sept. 2, from noon to 1:30 p.m., in St Paul Church of Columbus, 2101 Wildwood Ave, followed by a funeral service in the church, starting at 2 p.m.
According to his obituary, Ploeger was a successful insurance executive for The Jordan Agency from 1963-99. Most recently, he worked part time for Oakbridge Insurance Company and Striffler-Hamby.
Bill Ploeger’s golf accolades
In 2002, Golfweek ranked Ploeger as the No. 1 senior amateur golfer in the United States. He was the runner-up in the 2001 U.S. Senior Amateur tournament.
In 1999, Golf Digest ranked Ploeger as the top senior amateur.
Ploeger won the Golden Isles Invitational championship in Brunswick a record 11 times. He also won the Georgia Senior Championship four times and captured the 1999 USGA Senior Amateur. In 2000, he participated in the U.S. Senior Open and the British Senior Open.
According to the Glynn County Sports Hall of Fame, Ploeger was a standout athlete at Glynn Academy. He played for Georgia Tech, where he served as captain of the 1963 Yellow Jackets golf team and was named an honorable-mention NCAA All-American.
Ploeger qualified for the U.S. Amateur six times, the U.S. Mid-Amateur five times and the U.S. Senior Amateur 10 times. He won the Future Masters in Dothan, Alabama, and the Senior Masters in Palm Springs, California.
The Georgia Tech Sports Hall of Fame, the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame, the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, the Senior Amateur Hall of Fame and the Chattahoochee Valley Sports Hall of Fame also have inducted Ploeger.
Ploeger also was a servant leader in the community. He was a past chairman for the United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley and The Boys Club of Columbus.
Reaction to Bill Ploeger’s death, celebration of his life
“You cannot talk about the long history of golf in this community without Bill Ploeger,” Leo Berard, chaiman of the Chattahoochee Valley Sports Hall of Fame, told the Ledger-Enquirer in an email. “His accomplishments have long been written, but his character and genuine personality will always be remembered.”
Former CVSHOF chairman Jim White told the L-E in an email, “To be clear, we are very shocked to hear of Bill Ploeger’s death. We greatly appreciated his friendship, especially during the induction period when I was Chairman of the Chattahoochee Valley Sports Hall of Fame.
“Bill was always involved in various ways with our annual golf tournament and brought a special delight to those we paired with him during play. While his status worldwide was as the ultimate amateur, he was indeed a professional in the truest sense of the word. He will be missed by one and all.”
Matt Vanderpool, CEO of the Georgia State Golf Association, told the L-E in an email, “All of us at the Georgia State Golf Association were deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Georgia Golf Hall of Fame member, Bill Ploeger. Mr. Ploeger was a very well-respected gentleman in the game and highly accomplished amateur golfer who achieved incredible success at the state and national levels. . . . Mr. Ploeger will always be recognized as one of the legends of the game of golf in Georgia and will be dearly missed.”
What it was like to play golf with Bill Ploeger
Although he is a generation younger than Ploeger, Columbus resident Wright Waddell, 63, also is a Georgia Golf Hall of Fame member, so he knows an excellent amateur golfer when he sees one. But his reverence for Ploeger was about more than his swing.
“He was truly a role model for me,” Waddell, a financial adviser with Morgan Stanley, told the Ledger-Enquirer. “I mean, he was probably the classiest, nicest guy I’ve ever met in my life. He was one fierce competitor but the greatest sportsman that I’ve played with.
“So, when I heard that he suffered a severe heart attack on the course, I thought, ‘Man, what a way to go! I cannot think of a better, more apropos way for him to go, doing something that he absolutely loved more than just about anything on Earth.”
Waddell marveled at Ploeger’s consistency.
“He never tried to do anything other than what he was best at,” Wright said, “and that was just fairways and greens.”
Such consistency went beyond how Ploeger struck the ball, Wright noted.
“Always smiling, always encouraging,” he said. “I’ve never seen him say a four-letter word, never seen him throw a club. I’ve seen him disappointed, but I’ve never seen him angry.
“As many wins as he had, he didn’t boast about his victories. I’m sure he had a lot of crushing defeats too, but he just went about his business. He was just as good as there was.”
Waddell’s favorite memory of Ploeger comes from a comment he often would make to his playing partners between golf shots — and sometimes sips of beer or even drags of a cigarette — on a beautiful day: “Man, it doesn’t get any better than this.”
This story was originally published August 28, 2025 at 10:09 AM.
