BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s golf team will be in action for the third straight week as it wraps up its fall season at the 2007 UNCG Bridgestone Collegiate Championship beginning Monday at Forest Oaks Country Club in Greensboro, N.C.
This marks the first season that UNC-Greensboro will host its 54-hole tournament during the fall season as the course will play to a par 72 and 7,197 yards for the championship.
The Tigers, who are ranked No. 47 nationally, will compete against the strongest field they’ve seen during the fall season as 11 of the 15 teams enter the tournament ranked among the Top 50 teams in the nation in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index released Oct. 21.
Joining LSU and tournament host UNC-Greensboro in the 15-team field this week are No. 17 Indiana, No. 18 Wake Forest, No. 22 Arkansas, No. 23 North Carolina, No. 27 Louisville, No. 33 Central Florida, No. 37 Mississippi State, No. 39 Memphis, No. 43 Kent State, No. 49 Notre Dame, College of Charleston, Maryland and Toledo.
Forest Oaks Country Club is one of the top golf courses in the country as it plays host to the PGA Tour’s annual Wyndham Championship. The field will play two rounds on Monday beginning at 7:30 a.m. CDT with the final round scheduled to begin Tuesday at 7:30 a.m.
LSU head coach Chuck Winstead has elected to play with the same lineup for the third straight tournament as senior Brian Noonan and freshmen Andrew Loupe, John Peterson and Clayton Rotz are each making their fifth tournament appearance of the fall. Junior Jarrod Barsamian is set to make his third start in as many tournaments.
The squad is coming off of a sixth-place finish at the ClubGlove Intercollegiate in Somis, Calif., despite playing through difficult conditions with wildfires burning within 10 miles of the course.
The Tigers also earned their best finish in more than two years with a runner-up performance at the Squire Creek Invitational in Choudrant, La., two weeks ago. Rotz has been the team’s most consistent performer as he leads the team with two top-10 and four top-20 finishes this season.
LSU is paired with Arkansas and Louisville on the first day of the competition and will tee off from holes 7-10 following a shotgun start at 7:30 a.m. Live scoring of the event will be provided by Golfstat and can be found at the organization’s official website at www.golfstat.com.