BATON ROUGE – The 17th-ranked LSU Tigers will prepare for their regular-season finale at the Aggie Invitational this weekend by playing host to the one-day, 36-hole Tiger Classic on Tuesday as they welcome such programs as Lamar, New Orleans, Nicholls State Southeastern Louisiana and Jackson State to The University Club.
Each of the six teams will tee off at 8 a.m. CT with a shotgun start as they will play two rounds at The University Club with a second round in the afternoon following the opening round in the morning. The Tigers are set to play alongside Lamar and Southeastern Louisiana as they tee off from holes No. 1 and No. 18.
The Tigers are playing host to their second tournament at The University Club this season after they won the team title at the seventh-annual David Toms Intercollegiate during the fall season in October.
That’s where the Tigers finished even-par for 54 holes to finish an astounding 16 shots clear of the rest of the field to win their first team championship of the 2015-16 season. They opened the spring season by earning their second team title of the campaign at The Prestige at PGA West. Southeastern Louisiana is the only team in the Tiger Classic field to feature at the David Toms Intercollegiate while claiming sixth place.
The Tigers are ranked as high as No. 17 nationally in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index released Monday in the wake of their runner-up team finish at the prestigious Valspar Collegiate Invitational a week ago. The Tigers finished second in a 15-team field that also featured four top-10 and 10 top-25 ranked teams at Floridian National Golf Club.
Head coach Chuck Winstead has selected the same lineup that brought home a second-place finish from the Valspar Collegiate Invitational as senior Zach Wright, junior Brandon Pierce, junior Eric Ricard, freshman Sam Burns and freshman Luis Gagne will play for the team title at the Tiger Classic. Junior Rhyne Jones, sophomore Blake Caldwell and freshman Nathan Jeansonne will each play as individuals.
Wright is coming off his second tournament victory in three spring starts after defeating Texas A&M’s Chandler Phillips in a sudden-death playoff to win medalist honors at the Valspar Collegiate Invitational.
Wright matched Phillips for 54 holes with a tournament score of 2-under par 211 before taking the title with a par on the first playoff hole to secure his second title this spring and third individual title of his LSU career. It is a spring season that Wright opened as individual champion at The Prestige at PGA West where he fired a career-low tournament score of 12-under par 201. He is LSU’s leading scorer heading down the homestretch of the regular season with a 71.17 scoring average in eight tournament starts.
In just his second career appearance for the Tigers at the Valspar Collegiate Invitational, Gagne finished just one shot behind Wright in a tie for third place with a career-low score of 1-under par 212 to earn his first top-five and top-10 finish of the season. He also slashed his scoring average by nearly three shots to 73.50 stroke per round in his two tournament starts.
Burns is still in search of his first career top-10 finish as the team’s third-leading scorer with a 72.95 stroke average, while Pierce follows with a 73.44 scoring average and one top-10 finish and Ricard sports a 73.86 stroke average and one top-10 finish on the season to round out the Tiger Classic lineup. Ricard won his first career individual title at the David Toms Intercollegiate back in the fall.
After playing host to the 36-hole Tiger Classic on Tuesday, the Tigers will finish their regular season with an appearance at Texas A&M’s Aggie Invitational being held Saturday and Sunday at Traditions Golf Club in Bryan, Texas. They will defend their SEC title at the 2016 SEC Men’s Golf Championships being held April 15-17 at Sea Island Golf Club in St. Simons Island, Georgia.