BATON ROUGE – After winning its first team title of the season at the David Toms Intercollegiate on Sunday afternoon, the defending national champion LSU Men’s Golf team has made the trip to Alpharetta, Georgia, to compete at the 10th-annual United States Collegiate Championship beginning Friday at the Country Club of Georgia.
The Lakeside Course at the Country Club of Georgia will play to a par 72 and 7,017 yards for the three-day, 54-hole championship as tee times in Friday’s opening round are set to begin at 7 a.m. CDT. Pairings will remain the same from the first round in Saturday’s second round as the action gets underway again at 7 a.m.
Tee times in Sunday’s deciding final round are also scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. CDT to determine this year’s individual and team champions as pairings will be made based on each team’s 36-hole score.
The Tigers are competing at the U.S. Collegiate Championship for the second-straight season after taking home an impressive third-place finish from their debut last fall. The tournament has attracted a strong 17-team field again this season as it is sure to be one of the most competitive events of the collegiate season outside of the NCAA Championships.
On the strength of their 16-shot victory at their own David Toms Intercollegiate held at the University Club in Baton Rouge last weekend, the Tigers debuted at No. 26 in the first Golfstat power rankings for the 2015 fall season. LSU opened the season with a fourth-place finish at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic (Sept. 11-13) before taking ninth place at the Golfweek Conference Challenge (Sept. 25-27).
The 10th-annual U.S. Collegiate Championship features one of the strongest fields of the regular season with four top-five, seven top-10, 12 top-25 and 16 top-25 teams in this week’s release of the Golfstat rankings.
Joining the Tigers in the field are No. 19-ranked and tournament host Georgia Tech, along with No. 1 Auburn, No. 2 Oklahoma State, No. 4 Florida State, No. 5 Wake Forest, No. 7 Southern California, No. 8 Stanford, No. 9 Oklahoma, No. 13 Texas, No. 21 Clemson, No. 22 Virginia, No. 24 UCLA, No. 43 Iowa, No. 48 Kent State, No. 50 East Tennessee State and No. 71 Ole Miss.
LSU is set to tee off with Stanford and Texas in each of the first two rounds on Friday and Saturday as they will tee off from the front nine beginning at 11:25 a.m. CDT in the first round and from the back nine beginning at 7 a.m. CDT in the second round of the championship. Golfstat will provide live scoring of the event throughout the weekend as fans can follow the action online at http://www.golfstat.com.
The Tigers fired a 7-under par 857 for 54 holes in their debut appearance at the U.S. Collegiate Championship a year ago, including a 9-under par 279 in the second round and 6-under par 282 in the third round.
The Texas Longhorns edged the Virginia Cavaliers by a single stroke for the team title in 2014 while firing the second-lowest winning score in tournament history at 21-under 843 over three rounds. Virginia’s Derek Bard is back to defend the individual title he won as a sophomore a season ago as he fired a three-day total of 15-under 201 to finish six shots clear of teammate Denny McCarthy on the final leaderboard.
Senior All-American Zach Wright and junior All-American Eric Ricard return to the Country Club of Georgia after finishing as the top two Tigers in LSU’s lineup last fall while helping their team take home third place in the ninth-annual event. They are also joined in the lineup this weekend by junior All-American Brandon Pierce and freshmen Sam Burns and Nathan Jeansonne each making their first appearance in the tournament.
Ricard, a PING Honorable Mention All-American as a sophomore last season, captured his first collegiate title with a career-low score at the David Toms Intercollegiate last weekend with his winning 10-under par 206 to finish seven shots clear of the field. It was a victory that included a career-low round of 7-under 65 in the second round and 4-under 68 in the final round to secure the title.
The top Tiger in a tie for eighth place at the U.S. Collegiate Championship last fall, Ricard dropped his scoring average to 73.22 strokes per round in his three starts with his victory at the University Club.
Wright took his second top-10 finish in three appearances this fall when he tied for eighth place at the David Toms Intercollegiate after opening his senior season by tying for fourth place at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic. Wright, who enters the weekend with a 72.89 scoring average this fall to rank second on the team, tied for 13th place at the U.S. Collegiate Championship a season ago.
Burns and Jeansonne have been impressive at the start of their collegiate careers after signing with the Tigers as two of the nation’s top recruits as teammates at Calvary Baptist Academy in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Jeansonne trailed only Ricard on the final leaderboard at the David Toms Intercollegiate as he tied for second place overall with a final score of 3-under 213 for his best finish in two starts this season. Four of his last five rounds have been under par as Jeansonne is the team’s leading scorer with a 71.50 stroke average in his first two starts as an LSU Tiger.
After finishing in the Top 20 of the final leaderboard in his first two collegiate starts, Burns tied for 28th place last weekend to help the Tigers win their first team title of the 2015 fall season. Burns, who has an average of 73.78 strokes per round this fall, also boasts a tie for 19th place in his collegiate debut at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic and a tie for 16th place at the Golfweek Conference Challenge.
Pierce, who joined Wright and Ricard as an All-American with a third-team selection from Golfweek in the spring, made his season debut at the David Toms Intercollegiate where he tied for 28th place overall.
After competing at the 10th-annual United States Collegiate Championship this weekend, the Tigers will finish off their 2015 fall season in just over two weeks with a return trip to the state of Georgia for an appearance at the inaugural East Lake Cup hosted by the Golf Channel at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. The East Lake Cup debuts this season as it will put the Final Four teams in match play from last year’s NCAA Championship in a match-play competition with the Tigers joining Georgia, Illinois and Southern California in the two-day competition.
The No. 7-seeded Tigers defeated the No. 5-seeded USC Trojans by a score of 4-1 in the NCAA Championship Match back on June 3 to win their fifth national championship in program history. LSU advanced to the title match by defeating No. 3-seeded Georgia by a 3.5-1.5 margin in their second-straight appearance in the NCAA Semifinals of match play.