BATON ROUGE — After Golf World magazine put LSU at No. 21 in its preseason rankings, GolfWeek came along Thursday and sweetened the deal putting LSU at No. 19 in the country in its preseason top 30.
The Lady Tigers won’t have to wait long to put their new ranking in play as they will travel to two tournaments in a seven-day period as they will take part in the Cougar Classic, hosted by the College of Charleston on Monday and Tuesday and the Mason Rudolph Intercollegiate Classic next weekend in Nashville, hosted by Vanderbilt.
The rankings and the start of the season come at a busy time for LSU as the team has completed qualifying for the first tournament and will host many former golfers Friday and Saturday in Alumni Weekend activities. PGA star David Toms along with longtime tour player Emlyn Aubrey will be back along with Diana Shore Player of the Year Lisette Lee, a member of the “Three Amigas” of the mid 1990s, Ashley Winn and Cissye Meeks just to name a few.
LSU’s opening lineup on Monday will include the senior South African twins, Melissa and Nicola Eaton and juniors Rebecca Kuhn, Kim Meck and Alexis Rather. LSU won the Cougar Classic in 2004 and finished seventh in 2005.
“We are very happy with both rankings that have come out this week,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “It certainly shows the respect we are getting around the country for what we did a year ago. With all five of those players back and Nicky (Eaton) playing well in qualifying, it certainly gives an opportunity to get off to a good start. But it’s a long seasons and we are playing five fall tournaments this year so we just want to remember like last year that it’s one shot at a time and not let the bad things get us down.”
The complete Top 30 poll as chosen by GolfWeek:
1. Duke; 2. Arizona State; 3. Georgia; 4. Pepperdine; 5 UCLA; 6 Southern California; 7. Auburn; 8. Purdue; 9. Virginia; 10. Texas A&M; 11 Wake Forest; 12. Arizona; 13. Tennessee; 14. Florida; 15. Vanderbilt; 16 Oklahoma State; 17. Stanford; 18 UNLV; 19. LSU; 20 SMU; 21 Ohio State; 22. Kent State; 23. Michigan State; 24. Arkansas; 25. South Carolina; 26. BYU; 27. New Mexico; 28. North Carolina; 29. Florida State; 30. TCU.