BATON ROUGE – With a flying start to its 2014 fall season with a recent victory at the Golfweek Conference Challenge at Spirit Hollow Golf Club in Burlington, Iowa, and new Top 5 national ranking to its credit, the LSU Men’s Golf team has been honored among the university’s athletic programs with the BASF Team Chemistry MVP Award for the month of September.
The Tigers will play host to their sixth-annual David Toms Intercollegiate at the University Club in Baton Rouge this weekend in the wake of a dominant 11-shot victory at the Golfweek Conference Challenge two weeks ago when they fired a winning score of 15-under par 849 to finish ahead of runner-up SMU for their first victory of the 2014-15 season.
It was a clean sweep for the Tigers as senior All-American Stewart Jolly defended the individual title at the Golfweek Conference Challenge that he also won as a junior during the 2013 fall season a year ago.
Jolly is showing the form of a First-Team All-American early in his senior season as he has fired a cumulative score of 18-under par in LSU’s two tournaments to this point of the campaign. Jolly opened with a third-place individual finish at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic with his season-opening score of 9-under par 207 before matching that effort with a winning score of 9-under 207 at the Golfweek Conference Challenge.
Jolly earned All-America honors for the first time in his collegiate career a season ago when the picked up third-team selections from both PING and Golfweek after leading the Tigers into the NCAA Semifinals of match play at the 2014 NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships held last June at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson, Kansas.
The Tigers turned in a true team effort in their recent victory at the Golfweek Conference Challenge as three of the five members of the lineup earned top-five finishes on the final leaderboard during the event.
Sophomore Eric Ricard opened the tournament by firing a career-low round of 3-under par 69 en route to a career-low tournament score of 5-under par 211 to finish runner-up to Jolly in the final individual standing for his best finish in two seasons as an LSU Tiger. Senior All-American Ben Taylor also tied for fifth place on the final leaderboard with his season-low score of 1-under par 215.
The Tigers have cashed in on their fast start to the 2014 fall season with a No. 5 national ranking in the most recent Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index released on Sept. 23. They kicked off the campaign with a No. 9 national ranking in the Golf Coaches Association of America Division I Preseason Top 25 ranking.
As the world’s largest chemical company, BASF’s manufacturing presence in Louisiana includes operations in Geismar, Zachary and Vidalia, with nearly 2,000 employees and contractors in the state. For more information about careers at BASF, visit www.basf.us/la.