American golfer Justin Thomas and Polish tennis star Iga Swiatek impressed on the biggest stages in their sports in May and were named the United States Sports Academy’s Athletes of the Month.
Thomas won his second PGA Championship with a playoff win against Will Zalatoris on 22 May 2022 in Tulsa, Okla. Thomas shot a 5-under par 275 to win his second major tournament.
Swiatek won her 28th consecutive match and captured the women’s Italian Open title with a 6-2, 6-2 win against Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur on 15 May 2022. Swiatek has now won all four Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) 1000 tournaments she has played in this season and won her last five WTA tournaments overall.
The second place finisher on the men’s side was Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic and third place went to American athlete Ryan Crouser.
Djokovic defeated Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-0, 7-6 to capture his sixth Italian Open men’s title on 15 May 2022. Djokovic also claimed his 1,000th career win on the ATP Tour, becoming just the fifth men’s player to reach that milestone.
Crouser set a season’s world-best throw in shot put with a distance of 22.75 meters at the Puerto Rico International Athletics Classic on 12 May 2022. Crouser’s throw came in the first round before he added two additional throws beyond 22 meters to secure the gold.
The second place finisher on the women’s side was American wrestler Sarah Hildebrandt and third place went to American heptathlete Anna Hall.
Hildebrandt won her seventh Pan American Championships title after defeating Canada’s Madison Parks in the 50kg final on 7 May 2022 in Acapulco. Hildebrandt has never lost a bout at the continental championships since she began competing in 2013.
Hall improved upon her US collegiate record with a total score of 6,458 points in the USATF Combined Events Championship in Fayetteville, Ark., on 7 May 2022. Hall also posted the fourth-fastest time in the 800 meters as part of heptathlon with a time of 2:03.11.
Each month, the public is invited to participate in the Academy’s worldwide Athlete of the Month program by nominating athletes and then voting online during the first week of every month. The online votes are used to guide the Academy selection committee in choosing the male and female monthly winners, who then become eligible for selection to the prestigious Athlete of the Year ballot. A worldwide public vote on the annual ballot is used to guide the committee in making the final selection.
The Athlete of the Year Award is part of the United States Sports Academy’s Awards of Sport program, which each year serves as “A Tribute to the Artist and the Athlete.” The Academy presents the awards to pay tribute to those who have made significant contributions to sport, in categories as diverse as the artist and the athlete in several different arenas of sport.
The awards honor exemplary achievement in coaching, all-around athletic performance, courage, humanitarian activity, fitness and media, among others. The Academy’s American Sport Art Museum and Archives (ASAMA) annually recognizes these men and women through its Sport Artist of the Year, Honorary Doctorates, Distinguished Service Awards, Outstanding Athletes, and Alumni of the Year awards. This is the 37th year of the Academy’s Awards of Sport program.
The United States Sports Academy is an independent, non-profit, accredited, special mission sports university created to serve the nation and world with programs in instruction, research and service. The role of the Academy is to prepare men and women for careers in the profession of sports.
Founded in 1984, ASAMA is dedicated to the preservation of sports art, history, and literature. The ASAMA collection is composed of more than 1,800 works of sport art across a variety of media, including paintings, sculptures, assemblages, prints and photographs. The museum is open free to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. For more information, go to www.asama.org.
The Academy is based in Daphne, Ala. For more information, call (251) 626-3303 or visit www.ussa.edu.
