BATON ROUGE — The 18th-ranked LSU men’s golf team will tee it up in tournament play for the first time in three weeks when it travels to Choudrant, La., to compete in the 16-team field at the Squire Creek Invitational beginning Monday at Squire Creek Country Club.
The Tigers are ranked as high as No. 18 in the country in this week’s Golfweek/Sagarin Top 25, while they are also ranked No. 20 in the latest Golfstat Top 25 and No. 24 in the Nike Golf/Golf World Coaches Top 25 released earlier this month.
They will look to challenge for the team title at the 54-hole championship at Shoal Creek Country Club after earning a runner-up finish in the event a year ago.
LSU has already captured one tournament title this season when it opened the campaign with the win at the 2008 Gopher Invitational hosted by the University of Minnesota at Spring Hill Golf Club in Wayzata, Minn. It marked LSU’s first tournament victory in nearly three years.
In order to earn their second tournament title of the fall season, the Tigers will battle 15 programs that include the likes of tournament host Louisiana Tech, defending champion and SEC rival Ole Miss, Arkansas-Little Rock, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisville, Nebraska, Nevada, New Orleans, Southern Miss, South Alabama, Southeastern Louisiana Middle Tennessee State and Texas-Arlington.
The tournament is scheduled for two days with the first and second rounds being contested during Monday’s action followed by the final round Tuesday. A shotgun start is set for Monday at 8 a.m.
LSU head coach Chuck Winstead has elected to play with a young five-man lineup that includes the likes of sophomores John Peterson and Andrew Loupe, as well as freshmen Josh Jones, Sang Yi and Austin Gutgsell. Senior Jarrod Barsamian will play as an individual.
Yi and Peterson each earned Top 10 finishes to lead the team to victory at the Gopher Invitational with Yi finishing the championship in a tie for fifth place and Peterson earning a seventh-place finish in the season opener. The Tigers were then led by the play of Jones at the Shoal Creek Intercollegiate three weeks ago as he earned his first career Top 10 finish by tying for ninth place.
The trio will join Loupe in making its third tournament appearance of the fall, while Gutgsell will make his collegiate debut for the Tigers. Barsamian is also seeing his first action of the season.
The Tigers are paired with Louisiana Tech, Louisville and Ole Miss in the first and second rounds and will tee off from holes No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 beginning with a shotgun start at 8 a.m. Tee times for the final round will be determined following 36 holes of stroke play.