BATON ROUGE — After earning a No. 12 ranking in the Golfweek Preseason Top 25, the LSU men’s golf team is set to kick off the 2009-10 season with a trip to Bremerton, Wash., as it makes an appearance in the PING/Golfweek Invitational beginning Sunday at Gold Mountain Golf Club in Bremerton, Wash.
The Tigers return to the site of the 2008 NCAA West Regional Championships when they were one of 27 teams competing in postseason play at Gold Mountain Golf Club.
LSU earned its second-straight regional appearance a year ago when it competed in the NCAA South Central Regional en route to a No. 19 national ranking in the final Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index.
The Olympic Course at Gold Mountain Golf Club will host the three-day, 54-hole event that includes five teams ranked in the top 10 of the Golfweek Preseason Top 25, including No. 2 Oklahoma State, No. 3 and tournament host Washington, No. 4 Texas A&M, No. 5 Arizona State and No. 9 Alabama.
The Tigers will also join the likes of such nationally-ranked programs as No. 14 TCU, No. 16 USC and No. 23 Colorado State, while Chattanooga, Kent State, Indiana and New Mexico rounds out the field. The course will play to a par 72 and 7,152 yards for the championship.
“We’re looking forward to getting our season started this week. It’s going to be a great event,” said LSU head coach Chuck Winstead. “The Olympic Course at Gold Mountain will test all parts of the game and offers our guys the opportunity to play a different type of course than they usually play. We look forward to the challenge against such an outstanding field.”
Junior John Peterson returns to lead the Tigers after earning Second-Team All-America honors a year ago by both PING and Golfweek. Peterson, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, also picked up First-Team All-SEC accolades last spring, becoming the first LSU Tiger to do so since 2003.
Joining Peterson in the five-man lineup at the PING/Golfweek Invitational are senior Brent Blaum, junior Andrew Loupe, sophomore Josh Jones and sophomore All-SEC performer Sang Yi.
The Tigers will play with Alabama and Arizona State in Sunday’s first round. The second round will take place on Monday followed by the final round on Tuesday with pairings yet to be determined. Live scoring of the event is provided by Golfstat and can be found online at www.golfstat.com.