William D. (Bill) Ploeger was a standout athlete at Glynn Academy. He then went on to join the Georgia Tech golf team where he served as captain of the 1963 Yellow Jackets and earned NCAA All-American honorable-mention honors.

Following his graduation from Georgia Tech, Ploeger began a long and impressive amateur golf career. He has qualified for the U.S. Amateur six times, the U.S. Mid-Amateur five times and the U.S. Senior Amateur 10 times. Ploeger won the Future Masters in Dothan, Ala., and the Senior Masters in Palm Springs, Calif.

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Ploeger has won the Golden Isles Invitational championship in Brunswick a record 11 times. He has also won the Georgia Senior Championship four times and captured the 1999 USGA Senior Amateur. In 2000, he participated in both the U.S. Senior Open and the British Senior Open.

 In 1999, Golf Digest ranked Ploeger the top senior player in the United States. That same year, he also received the GSGA’s Tommy Barnes Award as the overall Player of the Year, an honor he repeated in 2002. In 2001, he was the runner-up in the U.S. Senior Amateur and in 2002, was ranked the No. 1 senior amateur in the U.S. by Golfweek.

Ploeger is a member of 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.

He resides in Columbus.