BATON ROUGE – Following their historic victory at the 16th-annual Prestige at PGA West to open their spring season just over a week ago, the 17th-ranked LSU Tigers look to take their momentum to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to compete against a strong 15-team field at this year’s Querencia Cabo Collegiate beginning Sunday at Querencia Golf Club.
LSU’s winning team from The Prestige of senior Zach Wright, junior Brandon Pierce, junior Eric Ricard, freshman Sam Burns and freshman Nathan Jeansonne return to action for this three-day, 54-hole tournament that is set to get underway with a shotgun start at 10 a.m. CT in Sunday’s opening round.
Shotgun starts are also scheduled for 10 a.m. in Monday’s second round and 9 a.m. in Tuesday’s final round as the course at Querencia Golf Club will play to a par 72 and 6,928 yards for the championship.
The defending national champions came out firing in their spring season opener as they fired a school-record round of 19-under par 265 in the final round to claim the team title by 18 shots with a school-record tourney score of 26-under par 826 at PGA West’s Greg Norman Course. It was LSU’s second tournament victory of the season after winning their own David Toms Intercollegiate in the fall.
That performance returned the Tigers to the Top 20 of the national rankings this week as they climbed to No. 17 in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index and No. 18 in the Golfstat power rankings.
Among the 15 teams teeing it up in a strong field at Querencia Golf Club this week will be three top-10, nine top-25 and 12 top-50 teams in this week’s Golfweek rankings released on Wednesday. Joining the Tigers this week are No. 2 Florida State, No. 6 Wake Forest, No. 10 Stanford, No. 12 Vanderbilt, No. 14 Georgia, No. 19 South Florida, No. 20 California, No. 24 Washington, No. 29 Arkansas, No. 35 Houston, No. 43 Baylor, Ole Miss, Oregon State and Rice. Florida State is the defending Querencia Cabo Collegiate champion after posting a 13-under par 839 to win by eight shots a year ago.
The Tigers tied Baylor for seventh place in the event a year ago when they posted a score of 14-over 866 in 54 holes played at Querencia Golf Club. Wright was the only Tiger to crack the Top 10 on the final leaderboard, firing a 1-under par 212 in three rounds to tie for 10th place overall en route to an All-American junior season last spring.
Wright is fresh off winning his second tournament title as an LSU Tiger as he led the lineup to the team title at The Prestige at PGA West by winning medalist honors with a career-low tournament score of 12-under 201 a week ago. He is now the team’s leading scorer with an average of 71.22 strokes per round while making six tournament appearances during his senior season.
Wright is certainly in the midst of an All-American senior season as he now ranks No. 21 by Golfweek and No. 24 by Golfstat in the latest individual player rankings in college golf thanks to his victory at The Prestige.
Pierce earned his first top-10 finish of the season in his last start with a sixth-place finish at PGA West as he fired a score of 5-under par 208 to drop his scoring average to 73.25 this season. Burns and Ricard also finished under par for the tournament at 1-under par 212 to tie one another for 14th place overall. Burns boasts a 72.93 scoring average to rank third on the team, while Ricard follows with a 73.13 to rank fourth.
Jeansonne’s performance proved to be one of the main storylines in the final round at The Prestige at PGA West as he fired the lowest score by an LSU Tiger in 27 years with his career-low 7-under 64 to climb back into the Top 20 of the leaderboard in a tie for 19th place after 54 holes. Jeansonne follows Wright as the team’s second-leading scorer this season with an average of 71.44 strokes per round.
The Tigers will play alongside Baylor and California in Sunday’s opening round as they will tee off from holes Nos. 10-14 beginning at 10 a.m. CT. Golfstat will provide live scoring of the event at http://golfstat.com.
After competing at the Querencia Cabo Collegiate event this week, the Tigers will continue their 2016 spring season with a trip to Palm City, Florida, to tee it up at this year’s Valspar Invitational at Floridian being held on March 21-22 at Floridian Golf Club. They will then wrap up their regular season at the Aggie Invitational in Bryan, Texas, on April 2-3 to prepare for the start of the championship season.