BATON ROUGE – The 2016 spring season continues Monday and Tuesday for the defending national champion LSU Men’s Golf team as the Tigers have arrived in Palm City, Florida, for an appearance at this year’s Valspar Collegiate Invitational as they follow a Sunday’s practice round with 54 holes of action at Floridian National Golf Club.
The No. 22-ranked Tigers are part of an outstanding 15-team field that will play three rounds at Floridian National Golf Club that is set up as a par 71 and 7,114 yards for the two-day championship. Teams will play a both the first and second rounds on Monday followed by the final round on Tuesday.
This year’s Valspar Collegiate Invitational has attracted one of the standout fields of the spring season with four top-10 and 10 top-25 teams in the latest Golfstat power rankings released on Wednesday.
The Tigers are the No. 22-ranked team nationally entering the weekend as they are joined in the championship by the likes of No. 3-ranked Illinois, No. 5-ranked Florida State, No. 7-ranked Florida, No. 8-ranked Texas, No. 11-ranked Clemson, No. 13-ranked Oklahoma State, No. 17-ranked South Florida, No. 18-ranked South Carolina and No. 23-ranked Arkansas.
All 15 teams in the field have arrived at Floridian National Golf Club ranked among the Top 50 teams nationally in the latest Golfstat rankings as No. 29 Texas A&M, No. 36 Houston, No. 38 Memphis, No. 45 Georgia Tech and No. 48 Kent State round out the field teeing off on Monday and Tuesday. Houston is serving as host of the event.
The Tigers are paired with their SEC rivals Arkansas and South Carolina during Monday’s action as they will tee off from holes Nos. 4-6 with a shotgun start beginning at 8 a.m. CT. Live scoring of the event will be provided by Golfstat and can be found online at http://www.golfstat.com.
The Valspar Collegiate Invitational has been kind to the Tigers in recent years as they finished just five shots behind Florida State in second place with a 54-hole score of 12-under par 840 a season ago.
Junior All-American Brandon Pierce led the way for the Tigers last spring as he cracked the Top 10 on the final leaderboard with a score of 3-under par 210 to tie for sixth place overall. Pierce is among the Tigers teeing it up at the Valspar Collegiate Invitational once again as senior All-American Zach Wright and junior All-American Eric Ricard will also make their return to Floridian National Golf Club. Ricard tied for 16th place with a 54-hole score of 1-under 212 and Wright tied for 27th place with a score of 3-over 216 in last year’s event.
Wright has led the lineup throughout his senior season in 2015-16 as the team’s leading scorer with 71.29 scoring average and three top-five and four top-10 finishes on the campaign. After opening his spring season by winning the individual title at The Prestige at PGA West, Wright has climbed to No. 18 in the Golfstat individual player rankings for the season.
Pierce and Ricard each have one top-10 finish to his credit this season as Pierce has averaged 73.40 strokes per round in five starts and Ricard has averaged 73.44 strokes per round in six starts for the 2015-16 season.
Freshman Sam Burns is set to make his seventh start for the Tigers in his rookie season as he is one of three Tigers to appear in all seven collegiate events on the year along with Wright and Ricard. Burns is still in search of his first collegiate Top 10 as he will tee off at the Valspar Collegiate Invitational ranked third on the team with a 73.11 scoring average in his six previous appearances.
Set to make his second appearance for the Tigers this season is fellow freshman Luis Gagne, who made his collegiate debut back in September with an appearance at the Carpet Capital Collegiate Classic in Georgia. The Orlando, Florida, native tied for 45th place in his LSU debut while posting a score of 13-over par 229 for 54 holes, including a low score of 3-over 75 in the second round at The Farm Golf Club.