BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s golf team is ready to tee it up for the first time in four months when it begins its spring season Saturday at the 30th SunTrust Gator Invitational at the University of Florida Golf Course in Gainesville.
Members of the 14-team field will get their first look at the course during Friday’s practice round as it will play to a par 70 and 6,800 yards for the weekend. The first and second rounds of the tournament will be played Saturday with a final round scheduled for Sunday to determine the championship.
The Tigers will face a strong field as five teams enter the tournament ranked in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Top 25, including tournament host and top-ranked Florida, No. 6 Coastal Carolina, No. 17 Tulsa, No. 18 Georgia State, No. 23 Wake Forest, Central Florida, Florida State, Georgia Southern, Kentucky, North Florida, Ohio State, Purdue and UAB.
“We’re looking forward to heading to Gainesville this weekend and teeing it up for the first time after a long layoff,” said LSU head coach Chuck Winstead. “The guys have been working very hard on their games over the last few months and look forward to competing against a strong field this week.”
Winstead has elected to open the spring season with a lineup that features senior Chris Wells, juniors Brian Noonan and Beck Troutman, sophomore Jarrod Barsamian and freshman Bryant Lach. Wells, Noonan and Troutman have appeared in all four tournaments for the Tigers this season, while Barsamian is making his third appearance and Lach is making his second.
Noonan is coming off of a stellar fall campaign in which he earned a pair of top-10 finishes while leading the team with an impressive 72.1 stroke average in nine rounds. The Austin, Texas, native posted a career-best second-place finish at the Shoal Creek Intercollegiate on Sept. 26, while closing out the fall by tying for ninth at the Oklahoma Intercollegiate on Oct. 17.
The SunTrust Gator Invitational has an illustrious 30-year history with the homestanding Florida Gators entering this year’s event as the defending champion as they finished six shots ahead of Tulsa a year ago. Tulsa’s Sam Korbe took top honors in the individual standings as he defeated former Florida standout Brett Stegmaier in two-hole playoff.
The Tigers have enjoyed success at this event in the past as they have won three tournament titles with their most recent championship coming in 2002. Former LSU great and current PGA Tour standout David Toms won medalist honors at the Gator Invitational as a senior in 1989.
The Tigers are paired with Coastal Carolina and Georgia State in the tournament’s opening rounds as play will begin Saturday with a shotgun start at 7 a.m. CST. Live scoring of the event will be provided by Golfstat and can be accessed at www.golfstat.com.