BATON ROUGE – Following a runner-up finish at the Louisiana Classics just 10 days ago, the No. 11-ranked LSU men’s golf team will continue its 2011 spring season this weekend as it makes a trip to Forest Heights Country Club in Statesboro, Ga., to compete in the 32nd-annual Schenkel Invitational.
Tee times for the first round of this year’s championship are set to begin at 8 a.m. CDT. The second round of the tournament will be held Saturday followed by the final round on Sunday. Forest Heights Country Club will play to a par 72 and 6,962 yards for the championship.
The Tigers will be competing against a 15-team field with a mostly regional draw featuring four programs ranked among the nation’s best in the latest Golfstat Top 25 poll released on Wednesday.
The No. 11-ranked Tigers will battle the likes of tournament host Georgia Southern, No. 4 Florida, No. 14 Auburn, No. 17 Virginia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi State, North Carolina, North Carolina State, North Florida, Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Vanderbilt during the three-day, 54-hole event.
LSU is grouped with Florida and Virginia during Friday’s first round and will tee it up on the front nine at 9:30 a.m. Live scoring of the tournament can be found online at www.golfstat.com.
The Auburn Tigers will compete this weekend as the defending team champion after earning a one-stroke victory over North Florida with a title-clinching 54-hole score of 2-under par 862. All-American Jonathan Randolph of Ole Miss is back to defend the individual championship he captured last year at the Schenkel Invitational after firing 5-under 211 for the 31st-annual event.
The Tigers are looking to improve upon the ninth-place finish they earned a season ago when they posted a team score of 13-over 877 in 54 holes of competition at Forest Heights Country Club.
Senior All-Americans Andrew Loupe and John Peterson will again lead LSU’s five-man tournament team that also features the likes of juniors Austin Gutgsell and Sang Yi and freshman standout Andrew Presley. Presley is the only member of LSU’s starting lineup who has never competed at the Schenkel Invitational, as each of the other four members are making their return to Forest Heights Country Club.
In addition, senior Clayton Rotz is scheduled to compete as an individual this weekend after competing as part of LSU’s five-man lineup at the Schenkel Invitational a year ago.
The Schenkel Invitational is named in honor of Hall of Fame sports broadcaster Chris Schenkel, who was the first to cover the The Masters on television, the first to anchor a live telecast of the Olympic Games on television and the first to broadcast a nationally-televised college football game.
Schenkel helped lend his name to a tournament that has grown into one of the premier collegiate tourneys in the country during the regular season. Through the years, six teams and three players have captured the Schenkel Invitational title en route to winning NCAA team and individual championships.
LSU has been one of the most consistent programs in the country throughout the 2010-11 campaign while finishing among the top three teams on the leaderboard in six of seven tournament appearances during the year. The Tigers have captured a pair of team titles at the Gopher Invitational (Sept. 12-13) and the David Toms Intercollegiate (Oct. 18-19), as well as second-place finishes at the Isleworth Collegiate Invitational (Oct. 24-26) and Louisiana Classics (March 7-8) and third-place team finishes with the Gator Invitational (Feb. 12-13) and John Hayt Invitational (Feb. 27-March 1) in the spring.
After competing this weekend at the Schenkel Invitational, the Tigers will head to Bulls Bay Golf Club in Awendaw, S.C., on March 27-29 where they will look to defend their team championship at the Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate hosted by the College of Charleston.