ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — The LSU men’s golf team wrapped up its preparation for the 2007 SEC Championships on Thursday with a practice round at 7:30 a.m. CDT and is set to open play Friday at the picturesque Seaside Course at Sea Island Golf Club.
This marks the seventh straight year that the Seaside Course has played host to the most competitive conference championship in college golf as four of the 12 teams enter the weekend ranked in this week’s Golfstat Top 25 led by No. 1 Georgia.
The Tigers will also compete against the likes of No. 3 Alabama, No. 9 Florida and No. 16 Tennessee, while Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Vanderbilt round out a strong 12-team field.
“We’re going to be facing the best when we tee it up tomorrow,” said LSU head coach Chuck Winstead. “The best teams in college golf play in our conference, and I think the rankings this year really back that up. We look forward to the challenge and will have a lot of fun this week on a great golf course.”
Participants will face perhaps their most difficult challenge of the season at the Seaside Course, which will feature a par 70 and 6,898-yard layout for the championship.
The course reopened in 1999 under the direction of world-renown golf course architect Tom Fazio and presents a challenge to the players at every turn. It features fast, undulating greens and the region’s signature tidal creeks, sand dunes, salt marshes and nearby St. Simons Sound.
“The course itself is a terrific golf course for this championship,” Winstead said. “It puts a premium on hitting it straight off the tee and knowing the speed of the greens. It’s a little different than what we prepare on each day, but it’s not something that we haven’t seen this year. It’s very similar in many ways to what we saw at Bulls Bay last month.”
Senior Chris Wells, junior Brian Noonan and junior Beck Troutman are each making their return to the Seaside Course after competing in last year’s championship. Wells finished the tournament in a tie for 33rd, while both Noonan and Troutman finished the weekend in a tie for 38th place.
Freshmen Brent Blaum and Bryant Lach set to make their debut at the SEC Championships for the first time in their LSU careers, but each has played the course while competing on the national junior circuit. In fact, Lach was a participant in the 2005 Polo Junior Golf Classic sponsored by the American Junior Golf Association.
“Chris has had a nice spring and is playing with some confidence right now, and both Brian and Beck have some valuable experience playing this course,” Winstead said. “This course also hosts a major relative to junior golf, and that will help as our two freshmen have played here before.”
LSU boasts one of the proudest traditions in the SEC with 15 conference championships and 16 individual medalists in its history. Former All-American David Toms guided the Tigers to their last SEC championship in 1987 as a sophomore by winning the individual title for the first and only time in his collegiate career.
The Tigers finished in sixth place a year ago with their lowest team total in the six previous years that the Seaside Course has played host to the championship. The squad posted a 54-hole score of 28-over 868, while Andrew Lanahan was the team’s top finisher in 11th place at 2-over 212.
Georgia enters the weekend as the defending champion as they held off Florida by one stroke last season to win their 24th conference title in program history. The Bulldogs finished with the lowest 54-hole score by an SEC champion since 1965 at 13-under 827, including an impressive round of 11-under 269 on the final day.
Former Florida All-American Brett Stegmaier won medalist honors at last year’s event for the second time in his career after firing a 5-under 205 for the championship. Then freshman Brian Harman of Georgia finished runner-up by one stroke as he carded a 54-hole score of 4-under 206.
The Tigers are paired with Florida and Vanderbilt in Friday’s opening round and will tee off from the first tee beginning at 7 a.m. Live scoring of the event is provided by Golfstat and can be found online by logging on to www.golfstat.com.