BATON ROUGE – The LSU men’s and women’s golf programs shared some of the limelight during Saturday’s 35-7 victory over Kentucky by the No. 1-ranked LSU football team as 2011 NCAA individual champions John Peterson and Austin Ernst were recognized on the field at the end of the first quarter and presented with their national championship rings.
Head coaches Chuck Winstead and Karen Bahnsen joined LSU’s champions on the field beyond the north endzone while being recognized before the 92,660 fans in Tiger Stadium for the game.
With a sweep of men’s and women’s NCAA individual titles in 2011, LSU became the first golf program in history to win both championships in the same season.
Peterson became the third LSU Tiger in program history and the first in 70 years to win the men’s NCAA individual title with his NCAA Championships victory at Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla. He joined Fred Haas, Jr. (1937) and Earl Stewart (1941) as the team’s NCAA medalists.
Peterson fired a 54-hole score of 5-under par 211, including a competitive course record 7-under 65 in the second round, to take home the men’s championship. The Fort Worth native scored a one-stroke win over UCLA’s National Player of the Year Patrick Cantlay to claim the national crown.
While Peterson became the third Tiger all-time to win the individual championship, Ernst is the first Lady Tiger to accomplish the feat after firing a school record 72-hole score of 7-under 281 to end up three shots clear of Arkansas’ Kelli Shean for the national title. That effort included matching totals of 6-under 66 for the second and fourth rounds, as well as a hole-in-one during the final round of the championship.
Ernst’s performance guided the Lady Tigers to their best team finish in program history during the NCAA Championships as they took third place with a score of 29-over par 1,181.