BATON ROUGE – After opening the 2011-12 season one month ago at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic, the LSU men’s golf team is set to resume its fall campaign this week as it competes with many of the premier programs in the country as part of Ohio State’s Jack Nicklaus Invitational beginning Monday morning at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio.
The course will play to a par 72 and a lengthy 7,352 yards for the two-day, 54-hole tournament as the first and second rounds will be held Monday followed by the final round on Tuesday.
This year’s Jack Nicklaus features an elite 12-team field as the Tigers will be joined by four teams ranked in the current Golfstat Top 25 ranking, including No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Arkansas, No. 5 Oklahoma State and No. 23 Illinois. Rounding out the field during the 2011 Jack Nicklaus Invitational is tournament host Ohio State, Kent State, North Carolina, Purdue, TCU, Texas Tech and UCLA.
The Tigers are paired with Oklahoma State and Kent State in the first two rounds on Monday and will tee off from holes Nos. 5-9 with a shotgun start set for 8 a.m. CDT. Golfstat will provide live scoring of the event, which can be found online at the organizations’ official website at www.golfstat.com.
Four Tigers return to LSU’s five-man starting lineup this week after earning an eighth-place team finish at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic in their 2011-12 season opener held Sept. 9-11.
Senior standout Sang Yi matched his career-best tournament finish in the season opener by tying for third place on the leaderboard at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic with a score of 5-under par 211.
Joining Yi this week after also competing at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic in LSU’s season opener are a pair of sophomores Franco Castro and Andrew Presley and true freshman Curtis Thompson. Not just that, but freshman Myles Lewis is also ready to make his collegiate debut for the Tigers in a 54-hole event while rounding out LSU’s starting lineup at the Jack Nicklaus Invitational.
The Tigers are looking to improve upon a sixth-place finish in the 10-team field at the inaugural event last season held at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio. They posted a team score of 46-over 886 to finish in sole possession of sixth place in the final team standings.
The Oklahoma State Cowboys return to defend their Jack Nicklaus Invitational team title after firing their winning score of 24-over 864 to finish six shots clear of Illinois a year ago.
Illinois senior Luke Guthrie is back to defend his individual title at the Jack Nicklaus Invitational captured in the inaugural event last season as he scored a comfortable three-stroke victory at 5-under 205 at the par 70 layout at Scioto Country Club. Oklahoma State’s Peter Uihlein finished three strokes behind Guthrie at 2-under 208 for the championship to earn a runner-up finish on the final leaderboard.