BATON ROUGE – Two members of the LSU Men’s Golf program will test themselves against the top amateur golfers from around the world this week as sophomore All-SEC standout Eric Ricard and incoming freshman Sam Burns tee off Monday at the 115th United States Amateur Championship being held at Olympia Fields Country Club outside of Chicago.
Two rounds of stroke play qualifying will be held on Monday and Tuesday before 64 qualifiers will compete in single-elimination match play for the Havemeyer Trophy starting with Wednesday’s first round.
The two future LSU teammates will tee off within minutes of one another in Monday’s opening round as Ricard gets underway from the first tee on the South Course at 8:40 a.m. CT with Burns teeing off from the first tee on the North Course at 8:50 a.m. Both will then tee off from the back nine on Tuesday as Ricard plays the North Course at 1:40 p.m. followed by Burns on the South Course at 1:50 p.m.
Ricard is set to make his U.S. Amateur debut this week after finishing as the top qualifier at Carter Plantation in Springfield, Louisiana, a month ago. That’s where he fired rounds of 5-under par 67 and 2-under par 70 for the top spot in the field of 56 in the qualifier at Carter Plantation with a 36-hole score of 7-under par 137.
A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Ricard most recently posted an unbeaten 2-0-1 mark in match play to help lead the Tigers to the fifth national championship in program history at the 2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships held at Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Florida, in early June. He was also a catalyst in guiding the Tigers to their 16th SEC Championship this spring.
Ricard enjoyed a breakout sophomore season with the Tigers in 2014-15 while being named a PING Honorable Mention All-American and Second-Team All-SEC performer as one of the top players in college golf.
While Ricard will be teeing off at the U.S. Amateur Championship for the first time in his golf career, Burns has earned a spot in the field for the second-straight season after qualifying for match play as the No. 5 seed a year ago in the summer following his junior season at Calvary Baptist Academy in Shreveport. He defeated South Carolina’s All-American Matthew Nesmith by a 2-and-1 margin to advance to the Round of 32.
Burns will soon arrive on campus as a freshman in the fall as the No. 1-ranked prep recruit in the United States after signing a National Letter of Intent with the Tigers on National Signing Day in November.
The nation’s No. 1-ranked junior golfer regardless of class in both the Golfweek Junior Golf Rankings and Polo Junior Golf Rankings, Burns capitalized on a brilliant 2014 season in the American Junior Golf Association by being named the Rolex Junior Player of the Year as the premier player in all of junior golf in the United States.
The 2014 AJGA Rolex First-Team Junior All-American emerged as the top-ranked junior golfer in the country in the wake of victories in two of the major championships on the junior calendar with his wins at the AJGA’s Rolex Tournament of Champions at Richland Country Club in Nashville, Tennessee, last June and the 2014 Junior PGA Championship at Miramont Country Club in Bryan, Texas, last July.
Burns has followed with a strong 2015 season in which he has appeared in two PGA TOUR events at the Valero Texas Open and FedEx St. Jude Classic, while also earning a seventh-place finish in the prestigious Players’ Amateur earlier this summer. He has also competed in such amateur championships as the Sunnehanna Amateur, Northeast Amateur, Southern Amateur and Western Amateur in 2015.