BATON ROUGE – As members of the LSU men’s golf team prepares to open the 2012 fall season on Friday at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic, junior All-SEC performer Andrew Presley and sophomore Curtis Thompson were honored Wednesday as Golf World Top 50 Players to Watch nationally this year.
Presley is coming off a sophomore campaign in 2011-12 in which he was honored as a Second-Team All-SEC selection as one of the nation’s emerging talents in all of college golf.
Thompson, who signed his National Letter of Intent with the Tigers as one of the nation’s Top 10 recruits in the Class of 2011, was one of LSU’s top performers as a rookie a year ago.
Presley enters his junior season following a recent run for the Sweet 16 at the 112th United States Amateur Championship held three weeks ago at Cherry Hills Country Club in Cherry Hills Village, Colo. He is poised to challenge for All-America honors after wrapping up his sophomore season as the No. 66-ranked player in the country in the final Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index of the 2011-12 season.
Also a PING All-Southeast Region performer, Presley made an appearance in all 12 tournaments a season ago while setting a career-low with a 72.5 scoring average for the campaign. He took home his first win at the 2012 Louisiana Classics while earning four top-10 finishes on the season.
Thompson, who also qualified for the match play tournament at this year’s U.S. Amateur, competed in 10 tournaments while posting a scoring average of 74.0 strokes per round during his freshman season.