BATON ROUGE – Just one day after climbing into the No. 1 spot in the latest Golfweek individual player rankings, LSU’s sophomore All-American Sam Burns topped the latest Arnold Palmer Cup Ranking released on Thursday by the Golf Coaches Association of America as the No. 1-ranked American in the running for Team USA.
The top-six golfers in the final Arnold Palmer Cup Ranking from both the United States and Europe to be announced March 16 will be among the individuals selected to compete in this summer’s Arnold Palmer Cup set for June 9-11 at the Atlanta Athletic Club in Georgia following the NCAA Championships.
The Arnold Palmer Cup Ranking utilizes Golfstat’s NCAA Player Ranking as its base for ranking the Top 25 Americans and Top 25 Europeans while awarding bonus points for wins and high finishes and negative points for poor finishes in amateur events. The ranking also uses a strength of schedule component as part of its biweekly calculations during the spring.
Burns has moved into the top spot among Americans in the penultimate Arnold Palmer Cup Ranking after sitting in the No. 2 position in each of the previous two announcements released by the GCAA.
Burns is looking to become the fourth LSU Tiger in five years to compete on the international stage at the Arnold Palmer Cup after former All-American Ben Taylor of Leatherhead, Surrey, England, teed it up for Europe during the event in 2013 before All-Americans Stewart Jolly and Zach Wright represented the United States in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
Burns has performed like a Ben Hogan Award and Haskins Award candidate throughout his sophomore season in 2016-17 while taking home three individual titles among his eight top-10 finishes in eight starts this year. He has opened his spring season with a runner-up finish at The Prestige at PGA West on Feb. 22 and a victory at the Louisiana Classics on Feb. 28 to lead the Tigers in their two appearances in 2017.
He capped the fall campaign by becoming the first LSU Tiger in history to win the Sun Bowl Western Refining College All-America Golf Classic in November after also winning the David Toms Intercollegiate in October.
Burns is a cumulative 60-under par in his eight appearances this 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. As a sophomore, Burns is on pace to smash his 72.42 scoring average from his rookie season in 2015-16 and Brandon Pierce‘s single-season scoring record for the Tigers of 71.16 from the 2014-15 campaign.
Arnold Palmer Cup Ranking (March 9)
United States
Player, School, Percentage
1. Sam Burns, LSU, .9990
2. Norman Xiong, Oregon, .9979
3. Maverick McNealy, Stanford, .9969
4. Chandler Phillips, Texas A&M, .9964
5. Jimmy Stanger, Virginia, .9958
6. Collin Morikawa, California, .9938
7. Sean Crocker, Southern California, .9937
8. Dylan Meyer, Illinois, .9929
9. Doug Ghim, Texas, .9922
10. Will Zalatoris, Wake Forest, .9906
11. Dylan Wu, Northwestern, .9880
12. Sahith Theegala, Pepperdine, .9870
13. Patrick Martin, Vanderbilt, .9864
14. Braden Bailey, Baylor, .9828
15. Spencer Ralston, Georgia, .9817
16. Nick Hardy, Illinois, .9802
17. Patrick Fishburn, BYU, .9798
18. Scott Stevens, South Carolina, .9792
19. Doc Redman, Clemson, .9777
20. Ian Holt, Kent State, .9776
21. Zach Bauchou, Oklahoma State, .9760
22. Hayden Wood, Oklahoma State, .9749
23. Sam Stevens, Oklahoma State, .9744
24. Gavin Hall, Texas, .9738
25. Danny Walker, Virginia, .9718
Europe
Player, School, Country, Percentage
1. Fredrik Nilehn, Texas Tech, Sweden, .9760
2. Federico Zucchetti, Texas Tech, Italy, .9703
3. David Wicks, Jacksonville, England, .9688
4. Viktor Hovland, Oklahoma State, Norway, .9681
5. Hannes Ronneblad, Texas Tech, Sweden, .9666
6. Harry Hall, UNLV, England, .9651
7. Kristoffer Ventura, Oklahoma State, Norway, .9588
8. Rory Franssen, Missouri, Scotland, .9588
9. Harry Ellis, Florida State, England, .9545
10. Edoardo Lipparelli, Illinois, Italy, .9383
11. Frederik Dreier, UTEP, Denmark, .9375
12. Gisli Sveinbergsson, Kent State, Iceland, .9372
13. Pierre Mazier, TCU, France, .9328
14. Ilari Saulo, Middle Tennessee State, Finland, .9291
15. Yannik Paul, Colorado, Germany, .9259
16. Linus Lilliedahl, Missouri, Sweden, .9258
17. Ryan Lumsden, Northwestern, England, .9243
18. Paul McBride, Wake Forest, Ireland, .9221
19. Sandy Scott, Texas Tech, Scotland, .9216
20. Tim Widin, San Francisco, Sweden, .9202
21. Stefano Mazzoli, TCU, Italy, .9197
22. Alejandro Del Rey Gonzalez, Arizona State, Spain, .9137
23. Mateusz Gradecki, East Tennessee State, Poland, .9132
24. Yannick Emmert, Wichita State, Germany, .9047
25. Bjarki Petursson, Kent State, Iceland, .9016