BATON ROUGE – LSU’s sophomore All-American and National Player of the Year candidate Sam Burns was honored Wednesday as the SEC Men’s Golf of the Week after opening his spring season with a second-place finish at The Prestige at PGA West and victory at the Louisiana Classics in what has been an eventful last eight days.
Burns led the Tigers to a successful defense of their crown at The Prestige at PGA West on Feb. 22 as he fired a 5-under par 208 in three rounds in LSU’s spring opener at the Greg Norman Course at PGA West.
Burns, the nation’s consensus No. 2-ranked player, finished ahead of many of the top players in college golf at The Prestige, including four top-25, 10 top-50 and 15 top-100 players in the Golfstat rankings. LSU won the team title in the event for a second-straight season against a host of nationally-ranked teams, including No. 10 Stanford, No. 11 Texas Tech, No. 14 Oklahoma, No. 22 San Diego State and No. 25 Arizona State.
He followed that performance by winning his third individual title in eight starts this season at the Louisiana Classics on Tuesday where he fired back-to-back rounds of 4-under 68 in the second and third rounds to earn the victory by one shot with a final score of 10-under par 206. Burns came from two shots down at the start of the final round to overtake Kent State’s Ian Holt by one shot after 54 holes.
It was Burns’ victory that led the Tigers to a third-place team finish in the 15-team field at the 32nd-annual Louisiana Classics, including a win over No. 2-ranked Illinois, which placed fourth in the event.
Burns continued two impressive streaks with his performance over the past week as he has now finished either first or second in four-straight tournaments dating back to the Ka’anapali Collegiate Classic during the fall season. He also extended his streak to eight-straight top-10 finishes during the 2016-17 season as he has not finished outside the Top 10 in any event this campaign.
One look at the stat sheet shows just why Burns has established himself as a Ben Hogan Award and Haskins Award candidate this season, as well as a favorite to join Team USA at the Arnold Palmer Cup this summer.
Not only is Burns the nation’s No. 2-ranked player in both the Golfstat and Golfweek individual player rankings, but he slots in as the No. 2-ranked American in the current national player rankings for the Arnold Palmer Cup. He is a cumulative 60-under par for the season and leads the Tigers with a 69.00 scoring average in 24 competitive rounds played in 2016-17 with 22 of his rounds being played at par or better.