BATON ROUGE — A spot in the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships will be on the line this weekend as the 16th-ranked and No. 4-seeded Tigers tee it up in Thursday’s first round of the NCAA South Central Regional to be held at Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla.
This marks the second-straight season in which the Tigers will tee it up in NCAA regional play as they earned a berth into the NCAA West Regional in 2008.
The three-day, 54-hole regional championship welcomes 13 teams vying for five qualifying spots for the NCAA Championships to be held May 27-30 at Inverness Golf Club in Toledo, Ohio.
Karsten Creek Golf Club is a Tom Fazio design that is considered one of the top home courses in all of college golf, and the second-ranked and top-seeded Oklahoma State Cowboys will play host to the event at the par 72 layout. The course will play to a lengthy 7,407 yards for the weekend.
“If I could have picked the course for us to play, I would have chosen Karsten Creek,” said LSU head coach Chuck Winstead. “Our guys are playing really well right now and are ready for the challenge. All of us are looking forward to going up to Stillwater and opening up the competition tomorrow. It’s sure to be an exciting tournament from the opening tee.”
In recent years, the 30-team field for the NCAA Championships has been determined with the use of three regional tournaments held across the country. However, the NCAA has elected to expand to six regional tournaments this spring with as many as 14 teams competing in each regional.
By earning a top-five finish this weekend, the Tigers would earn a spot in the 30-team field at the NCAA Championships for the first time since 1997.
Joining LSU and Oklahoma State in Stillwater this weekend in order of seeding are No. 2 Arkansas, No. 3 TCU, No. 5 Chattanooga, No. 6 Pepperdine, No. 7 Michigan State, No. 8 Baylor, No. 9 Northwestern, No. 10 Tulsa, No. 11 Denver, No. 12 Wichita State and No. 13 Oral Roberts.
The Tigers earned the right to compete in NCAA postseason play on the strength of winning three tournament titles this season, including the Gopher Invitational (Sept. 12-14), the John Hayt Invitational (Feb. 22-24) and the Reunion Intercollegiate (April 6-7). They also placed in a tie for fourth at the SEC Men’s Golf Championships for their highest finish in the event since 2002.
LSU will compete with the same lineup that placed fourth at the SEC Men’s Golf Championships as sophomore standouts Andrew Loupe, John Peterson and Clayton Rotz join freshmen stars Josh Jones and Sang Yi in the starting lineup for NCAA regional play.
Peterson leads the team into the postseason with a First-Team All-SEC selection under his belt as the All-America candidate ranks No. 24 nationally in the individual player rankings by Golfweek.
The Fort Worth, Texas, native leads the team and ranks No. 6 in the SEC this season with a stroke average of 72.37 in 30 competitive rounds as he has cracked the five-man starting lineup in all 10 tournaments for the Tigers this season. He has earned a third-place finish in each of his last three tournament starts, including an impressive third-place finish at the SEC Championships.
Yi has also been impressive for the Tigers this season as he was named a member of the SEC All-Freshman Team as one of the premier rookies in the country.
A native of Carrollton, Texas, Yi ranks No. 100 in the individual player rankings by Golfweek as he also ranks sixth among freshmen in the SEC with a 73.74 scoring average in nine tournament appearances this season. He also ranks second to Peterson on the team with four Top 10 and three top-five finishes in 2008-09 as he is also pushing for Freshman All-America honors.
This marks the second year in a row that Loupe, Peterson and Rotz will tee off in NCAA regional play as the trio cracked LSU’s starting lineup in the NCAA West Regional in Bremerton, Wash., a year ago. Jones and Yi are set to compete in NCAA postseason play for the first time.
After wrapping up Thursday’s opening round, the Tigers will tee it up in the second round Friday followed by the final round Saturday with tee times still to be determined for all three rounds.