BATON ROUGE – After opening the 2010-11 season one month ago with a victory at the Gopher Invitational, the LSU men’s golf team will return to the links Monday as it competes in the Jack Nicklaus Invitational being held at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio.
The course will play to a par 70 and 7,140 for the two-day, 54-hole championship that is being hosted by Ohio State. Teams will play the first and second rounds on Monday with tee times beginning at 8:30 a.m. CT. The third and final round will follow on Tuesday with tee times beginning again at 8:30 a.m.
Live scoring for each round of the tournament will be provided by Golfstat, and can be found online at the organization’s official website at www.golfstat.com.
This year’s Jack Nicklaus Invitational will feature a strong 10-team field with six teams ranked among the top 15 of the current Golfstat Top 25 power ranking, including five teams ranked among the top 10 teams in the country. The fourth-ranked LSU Tigers will compete against a group that includes No. 2 Oklahoma State, No. 8 Texas, No. 9 Illinois, No. 10 Arkansas, No. 15 Ohio State. Rounding out the field at the event are Baylor, Kent State, Purdue and Southern California.
Teams will play in twosomes during the first and second rounds beginning Monday morning as the Tigers will play alongside the Texas Longhorns with tee times beginning on the front nine at 8:30 a.m.
The Tigers are coming off an impressive 11-stroke victory in the season opener at the Gopher Invitational back on Sept. 13 with a 54-hole team score of 5-over par 869. LSU finished atop the team leaderboard by 11 shots ahead of Kent State and 20 shots ahead of Arkansas, two teams they will battle again this week.
And three Tigers will return to action at the Jack Nicklaus Invitational after leading the team to the win at the Gopher Invitational as senior Clayton Rotz and juniors Austin Gutgsell and Sang Yi will lead the way.
A senior from Chambersburg, Pa., Rotz earned the best tournament finish of his collegiate career a month ago as he tied for third place on the leaderboard at the Gopher Invitational with a score of 1-under par 215 that includes an impressive 6-under par 66 in the final round of the tournament.
After missing the season opener with an injury, senior All-American Andrew Loupe will make his season debut this week as he looks to build upon a 2009-10 season in which he earned honorable mention All-America selections from PING and Golfweek. True freshman Smylie Kaufman will also make his college debut for the Tigers this week at the Jack Nicklaus Invitational.