BATON ROUGE – Following back-to-back victories at the Golfweek Conference Challenge and David Toms Intercollegiate in recent weeks, the No. 6-ranked LSU Tigers are ready to wrap up their outstanding 2014 fall season this weekend at the ninth-annual United States Collegiate Championship beginning Friday at The Golf Club of Georgia in Alpharetta.
The three-day, 54-hole championship kicks off with Friday’s first round, followed by the second round on Saturday and the final round on Sunday. Tee times for Friday and Saturday will begin at 8 a.m. CT while the final round begins at 7:30 a.m. as The Lakeside Course at The Golf Club of Georgia will play to a par 72 and 7,017 yards for the weekend.
This year’s U.S. Collegiate Championship will feature one of the strongest fields the Tigers will face during the 2014-15 regular season as nine teams in the 15-team field qualified for the 2014 NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships a season ago, including five programs that advanced to the eight-team match play tournament for the national championship.
In addition, the tournament features five top-10, eight top-25 and 13 top-50 teams in the most recent Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index released by the publication on Monday morning.
The Tigers are the No. 6-ranked team in college golf by Golfweek as they have continued their momentum from the NCAA Championships where they made a historic run to the NCAA Final Four of match play.
Three of the four NCAA Semifinalists from a season ago will tee it up at the U.S. Collegiate Championship this week as the Tigers are joined by the No. 3-ranked Stanford Cardinal and 2014 NCAA runners-up and No. 36-ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys in the field. Two other NCAA Quarterfinalists from last spring will also feature with No. 5-ranked UCLA and No. 13-ranked Georgia Tech headlining the championship.
Oklahoma State edged host Georgia Tech by a single stroke to take home the 2013 U.S. Collegiate Championship title with a winning score of 15-under par 849 in the eighth-annual event last fall. There was a two-horse race for the title as Wake Forest finished well back in third place at 2-under par 862 for the tournament.
Four other NCAA Championships qualifiers will also be joining the Tigers in the event in No. 8-ranked Auburn, No. 17-ranked Texas, No. 23-ranked Washington and Texas A&M, while No. 9-ranked Wake Forest, No. 26-ranked East Tennessee State, No. 28-ranked Virginia, No. 31-ranked Clemson, No. 50-ranked Iowa and Kent State round out the field this weekend.
LSU, the second-highest ranked team in the field behind UCLA, is paired with Texas and Virginia in Friday’s opening round of the ninth-annual U.S. Collegiate Championship and will start the day in the first wave off the front nine beginning at 8 a.m. CT. Golfstat will provide live scoring of each day of the tournament as fans can follow the Tigers online at http://www.golfstat.com.
The Tigers will look to continue their recent run of form as champions of the Golfweek Conference Challenge in Burlington, Iowa, and their own David Toms Intercollegiate in Baton Rouge in recent weeks.
They dominated the field at the Golfweek Conference Challenge while firing a winning score of 15-under par 849 at Spirit Hollow Golf Club to finish 11 shots clear of the SMU Mustangs for their first victory of 2014-15. It was followed with a narrow win at the David Toms Intercollegiate where they posted a winning 27-over par 891 to finish just two shots in front of the Southeastern Louisiana Lions as runners-up.
The Tigers have actually swept team and individual titles in each of their victories as senior All-Americans Stewart Jolly and Ben Taylor have displayed their All-American form once again to open the 2014-15 season.
After opening his senior campaign with a third-place individual finish at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic held Sept. 5-7 at The Farm Golf Club in Rocky Face, Georgia, Jolly defended his individual title at the Golfweek Conference Challenge while firing matching scores of 9-under par 207 in each of his first two tournaments to start the season. He averages 71.67 strokes per round in his three tournament starts on the year.
Taylor tops the charts as the team’s leading scorer with a 71.33 scoring average in his three starts on the season. He followed Jolly in a tie for fifth place individually at the Golfweek Conference Challenge before scoring his first victory as an LSU Tiger at the David Toms Intercollegiate where he was the only player in the field to break par for 54 holes with a winning score of 2-under par 214.
Jolly and Taylor will once again lead a lineup that returns intact from LSU’s victory at the David Toms Intercollegiate as they are joined this weekend by senior Myles Lewis, junior Zach Wright and sophomore Eric Ricard.
Wright is still seeking his first top-10 finish of the season while following his senior teammates as the team’s third-leading scorer with a 73.33 scoring average in his three appearances. Ricard will also make a fourth start this season as he enters the weekend with a 73.89 scoring average, while Lewis will appear in his second event of the 2014 fall season.
Ricard is just two tournaments removed from his best collegiate appearance at the Golfweek Conference Challenge where he followed Jolly in second place with a career-low tournament score of 5-under par 211.
After wrapping up the 2014 fall season at the ninth-annual U.S. Collegiate Championship this weekend, the Tigers will break for the winter before returning to action Feb. 16-18 with a trip to La Quinta, California, to kick off an exciting 2015 spring season at The Prestige at PGA West being held at the Greg Norman Course at PGA West. They took fourth place in their debut appearance in the tournament a year ago.