BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s golf team will make its second trip to the state of Florida when it begins its spring season Saturday in the prestigious SunTrust Gator Invitational at the University of Florida Golf Course in Gainesville. The course will play to a par 70 and 6,701 yards for the 54-hole championship.
The Tigers join a strong 15-team field that features six teams ranked in the latest Golfweek Top 25, including No. 6 Wake Forest, No. 9 Kentucky, No. 18 Georgia State, No. 21 Tennessee, No. 24 Georgia Southern and No. 25 Purdue.
Rounding out the field is tournament host Florida, UAB, Central Florida, College of Charleston, Florida State, North Florida, Ohio State and South Carolina. Players will tee off at 8 a.m. and play 36 holes Saturday followed by a final round beginning at the same time Sunday.
“It’s a very strong field — probably the strongest field I’ve ever seen at the Gator,” said LSU head coach Greg Jones. “It’s always the first tournament in the spring, and it’s always a good test for a lot of players and a lot of teams.”
Jones will go with a lineup of senior Heath West, junior Aaron Smith, sophomores Chris Wells and Garrett Runion, and freshman Beck Troutman into the tournament. West, Wells and Runion are making their sixth tournament appearance of the season, while Troutman will make his fourth and Smith will make his second.
“Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t cooperated with us lately, but we’re about as prepared as we can be,” Jones said. “We’ve talked about the course, and we’ve worked on some of the shots we’re going to need to get around that golf course.”
Wells led the Tigers with a 72.07 stroke average and three top-10 finishes during the fall season. West followed closely behind with a 72.47 average and earned one top-10 finish. Runion averaged a 74.67 per round and shot the lowest 18-hole score of the fall with a six-under par 65 in the second round of the Mason Rudolph Intercollegiate. Troutman and Smith averaged 73.78 and 74.33, respectively.
Despite not having played in a collegiate tournament in more than three months, Jones believes his players have prepared themselves well enough to succeed in their first test of the spring season.
“The biggest thing is that the players made a commitment to work through the winter without very much time off, regardless of where they were,” Jones said. “Hopefully they’ve kept their games intact and kept a little bit of a competitive edge, which is going to be important when we go down to Gainesville.”