BATON ROUGE — After wrapping up its season opener at the PING/Golfweek Invitational on Monday, the LSU men’s golf team will head back on the road this weekend as it travels to Old Memorial Golf Club in Tampa, Fla., to compete in the Gary Koch Invitational beginning Saturday.
This year marks the return of the Gary Koch Invitational following a three-year break as both Auburn and Kentucky will serve as co-hosts of the event for the first time since 2005.
The 54-hole championship is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday as Old Memorial Golf Club will play to a par 72 and 7,389 yards for the weekend. The first and second rounds are slated for Saturday followed by the final round on Sunday to determine this year’s champion.
The Tigers are coming off a season opener in which they earned a 10th-place finish at the PING/Golfweek Invitational held last weekend at Gold Mountain Golf Club in Bremerton, Wash.
LSU is set to compete against another strong 15-team field this weekend as they join four teams ranked in the latest Golfstat Top 25, including No. 6 Florida State, No. 9 North Carolina, No. 11 Florida and No. 16 North Florida. Rounding out the field are such programs as Auburn, Augusta State, East Tennessee State, Georgia Southern, Kentucky, Ole Miss, South Florida, Texas Tech, UAB and Virginia.
Junior Andrew Loupe returns to lead the Tigers this weekend after earning a tie for 12th place last week at the PING/Golfweek Invitational. Fellow junior John Peterson and sophomore Sang Yi have also earned a spot in LSU’s five-man lineup for the second week in a row.
Junior Clayton Rotz and sophomore Austin Gutgsell are set to make their season debut for the Tigers after missing the starting rotation at the PING/Golfweek Invitational.
Tee times for the first round are scheduled to get underway at 6:40 a.m. CT, while the second round is set to begin following its completion. Pairings for the final round will be determined following Saturday’s action. There will be no live scoring of this year’s Gary Koch Invitational as fans are asked to check back with LSUsports.net for complete details following the action on Saturday and Sunday.