SUNDAY UPDATE: Due to thunderstorms, round 1 has been postponed until Monday at 6:30 a.m. CT with a shotgun start. Round 2 will immediately follow. At this time, there are no plans to shorten the event.
BATON ROUGE – As members of the 15th-ranked LSU men’s golf team enter the homestretch of the 2013 regular season, they will make their annual trip to Awendaw, S.C., this week to compete as part of a 15-team field at the ninth-annual Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate beginning Sunday morning at the par-71 Bulls Bay Golf Club.
Teams will tee off in Sunday’s opening round of the three-day, 54-hole event beginning at 9 a.m. CT, while tee times for the second and third rounds are set to begin at 8 a.m. on Monday and 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
The Tigers are looking to return to the winner’s circle at the Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate for the third time in four seasons after winning back-to-back team championships in 2010 and 2011.
LSU saw its streak snapped with a fifth-place finish in the event a year ago, after winning consecutive team titles with 54-hole tournament scores of 7-under par 845 in 2010 and 3-under par 849 in 2011. The Tigers were 11-over par in three rounds a year ago for a final team total of 875 in the eighth edition of one of the top tournaments of the spring season.
The Tigers are ranked as high as No. 15 nationally in the latest Golfstat Top 25 power ranking as they prepare to tee off in Sunday’s opening round at The Hootie. They are also the nation’s No. 16-ranked program in the most recent Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index released on Tuesday of last week.
This year’s Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate features a strong 15-team field with four teams in the Top 25 and 10 teams in the Top 50 of the Golfstat power rankings.
The 15th-ranked Tigers will compete alongside such teams as No. 11-ranked Duke, No. 21-ranked Auburn, No. 23-ranked Clemson, No. 26-ranked Texas A&M, No. 28-ranked Wake Forest, No. 32-ranked South Carolina, No. 36-ranked Missouri, No. 48-ranked NC State and No. 50-ranked Augusta State. Rounding out the field this week are College of Charleston, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin.
The Tigers are paired with North Carolina and Virginia in the opening round and will tee off from the front nine on Sunday morning beginning at 9:50 a.m. CT. Live scoring for all three rounds of the tourney can be found online at www.golfstat.com.
LSU has earned a second-place finish in three of its four tournament appearances this spring at the Mobile Bay Intercollegiate (Feb. 18-19), Louisiana Classics (March 4-5) and Argent Financial Classic (March 11-12) while posting a spring-low team score of 1-under par 863 in their last outing two weeks ago.
The Tigers return their same lineup from the Argent Financial Classic as junior Andrew Presley leads a group that also features sophomores Stewart Jolly, Myles Lewis and Curtis Thompson and freshman Zach Wright.
Presley fired a season-low 8-under par 208 in 54 holes at the Argent Financial Classic while finishing in second place on the final leaderboard for his team-leading third top-five finish and fourth top-10 finish for the year. An All-SEC and All-America hopeful again this spring, Presley is the team’s leading scorer with a 72.5 scoring average for his junior season.
Thompson follows Presley with a career-low 73.1 scoring average on the year as he tied for fifth place at 1-over par 217 two weeks ago for his second top-five finish and third top-10 finish for the season.
Wright has been perhaps the hottest Tiger of late after claiming his first collegiate championship with his victory at the Louisiana Classics tournament on March 5. Wright fired a career-low 7-under par 209 to capture his first career individual title in the event held at Oakbourne Country Club in Lafayette. He followed by tying for eighth place at the Argent Financial Classic.
Jolly, who has matched Thompson with a 73.1 scoring average this season, tied for 14th place and Lewis tied for 18th place in their last start for the Tigers at the Argent Financial Classic.
Following their appearance at the ninth-annual Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate this week, the Tigers will wrap up the 2013 regular season with a trip to College Station, Texas, to compete at the Aggie Invitational held April 6-7 at Traditions Golf Club. LSU then kicks off the postseason at the 2013 SEC Men’s Golf Championships being held April 19-21 at the Seaside Course at Sea Island Golf Club in St. Simons Island, Ga.