BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s golf team begins its race down the homestretch of the spring season as it travels to Awendaw, S.C., on Sunday to compete in the second annual Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate at Bulls Bay Golf Club. The course will play to a par 71 and 7,147 yards for the championship.
The Tigers will follow with a trip to Augusta, Ga., to participate in the Augusta State Invitational in the first week of April before making their return to the SEC Championships at Sea Island Golf Club in Sea Island, Ga., April 21-23.
“We need to stay focused on our goal of just playing in the present and staying focused on hitting one shot at a time,” said LSU head coach Chuck Winstead. “We can’t be concerned about what will happen in the future. Instead of focusing on who we’re competing against, we need to concentrate on our performance and what we can control this week.”
Winstead has elected to add senior Aaron Smith to the lineup this week as the Longwood, Fla., native will join fellow senior Andrew Lanahan, junior Chris Wells and sophomores Brian Noonan and Beck Troutman in competing in the Bulls Bay Intercollegiate.
Wells and Troutman are making their team-leading ninth tournament appearance of the season, while Noonan is making his eighth. Lanahan seeks his fourth straight top-20 finish in his seventh tournament appearance, while Smith is making his second appearance in the lineup and first since the Tunica National Intercollegiate to end the fall season.
“Our success this week will be dictated by our play on and around the greens,” Winstead said. “That’s in addition to handling the wind. This course is open off the tee, but requires a player to be accurate into the greens to score. We’ve been working very hard on doing just that.”
The Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate was established last spring in an effort to benefit the Hootie and the Blowfish Foundation, which seeks to support school music programs nationwide. The tournament raised more than $30,000 for the organization in the inaugural event.
Participating in a strong field has been a common theme for LSU throughout the spring and this week is no different. Joining the Tigers are seven teams ranked in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Top 30, including No. 14 Clemson, No. 15 North Carolina, No. 18 Kentucky, No. 22 Alabama, No. 27 N.C. State, No. 28 Auburn and No. 30 South Carolina.
Rounding out the 15-team field are Augusta State, Central Florida, College of Charleston, Florida State, Vanderbilt, Virginia and Wake Forest.
The Tigers earned a fifth place finish in last year’s event on the strength of top-20 finishes by Wells and Troutman, who are the only Tigers making a return trip in 2006. Wells finished in a 10th-place tie with a 5-over par 218, while Troutman finished in a tie for 15th with a 6-over 219. LSU finished 10 strokes behind tournament champion Kentucky with a 24-over 876.
The Tigers are paired with conference rival Alabama and Florida State in the first round and will tee off from the first tee beginning at 10:30 a.m. CST. Live scoring of each of the event’s three rounds is provided by www.golfstat.com.