BATON ROUGE – The annual LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic, hosted by the LSU women’s golf team at the LSU University Club, will take on an added significance in 2004 when the event is held as part of national series sponsored by the national golf manufacturing company.
The Cleveland Golf Collegiate Championship Series is a collection of eight separate tournaments, which touches almost every spectrum of college golf, with the main golf of promoting the growth of the college game.
The series has already had two stops to date, men’s tournaments at Kiawah Island in South Carolina and the Adams Cup in Newport, R. I. The next event, also a men’s tournament, is the Gary Koch/Cleveland Golf Intercollegiate set for Monday and Tuesday in Tampa, Fla., hosted jointly by Florida and Kentucky.
In fact, the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic, in its fifth year at the University Club, is the only women ‘s golf event on the eight-tournament schedule. This year’s event will be held March 4-6, 2004, a month earlier than normal because the Lady Tigers will also host the Southeastern Conference women’s championship tournament in April 2004.
“We are very excited about Cleveland Golf’s continuing title sponsorship of the Classic,” said LSU women’s golf coach Karen Bahnsen. “To be the only women’s tournament that they are presently sponsoring says a lot about the quality of the event we have put on at LSU, first at the Fairwood Country Club for many years, and now, at our own University Club. This year we will have our biggest field of teams since coming to the Club and we will join Cleveland Golf in proudly showcasing again our sport.”
“These tournaments are all a way of supporting players, coaches and programs financially,” said Mike Dunphy, Cleveland Golf’s player development manager. “The reason that this series was created was that we wanted to help college golf have better tournaments. We are trying to coverall of college golf. We haven’t quite accomplished that and if we were to add anything it would cover every base of college golf, men’s, women’s, Division II and Division III. We haven’t achieved it yet, but that’s what we are trying.”