BATON ROUGE – After leading the LSU men’s golf team to its most successful season in more than a decade, junior All-America candidates Andrew Loupe and John Peterson were honored as members of the PING All-Southeast Region Team as announced by the Golf Coaches Association of America.
This marks the second-straight season in which Peterson has received PING All-Southeast Region honors while it is the first time in his career for Loupe to earn such recognition.
The duo helped fuel the Tigers to a 24th-place finish this week at this year’s NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships, marking LSU’s first appearance in the event since the 1997 season. With its performance this week, LSU was the second-highest finishing team in the SEC at the NCAA Championships.
Peterson was impressive in his first NCAA Championships experience as he tied for sixth place overall in the individual standings while firing a 54-hole score of 5-under par 211 at The Honors Course in Chattanooga, Tenn., including a 4-under 68 in the second round and a 2-under 70 in the final round of the stroke play competition. He is the first LSU golfer since Perry Moss in 1991 to earn a Top 10 finish at the NCAA Championships while firing the lowest score in relation to par since at least 1985.
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Peterson followed a 2008-09 season in which he earned Second-Team All-America and First-Team All-SEC honors with an outstanding junior campaign in 2009-10. He finished in second on the team with a 72.3 scoring average to go along with two Top 10 and five Top 20 finishes.
Peterson’s best performance of the season came at the Gary Koch Invitational on Oct. 3-4 where he was a third-place finisher with the lowest tournament score by an LSU Tiger in more than 25 years at 12-under.
Loupe is sure to follow Peterson’s lead with his first career All-America selection. He finished the season as the team leader with a career-low 72.0 scoring average to go along with six Top 10s and eight Top 20s.
Loupe, who ranks No. 44 in the latest Golfweek ranking of the Top 100 college golfers in the nation, won First-Team All-SEC honors for the first time in his career after guiding the Tigers to a fifth-place finish at the 2010 SEC Men’s Golf Championships by tying for fourth place in the individual standings with a total of 3-under par 208 at the Seaside Course at Sea Island Golf Club in St. Simons Island, Ga.
Not only that, but Loupe followed his performance at the SEC Championships with another Top 10 finish at the NCAA Central Regional held at The Warren Course in South Bend, Ind., as he led the Tigers to the NCAA Championships by tying for sixth place on the leaderboard with a 2-under 208.
A native of Baton Rouge, Loupe finished in the Top 10 of the leaderboard in five of 10 tournaments since the start of the spring season, including his first career individual victory at the Louisiana Classics back in March with a season-low and career-low tournament score of 8-under par 208.
If Loupe receives All-America recognition as expected, it would mark the first time that LSU would have a First-Team All-SEC and All-America performer in consecutive seasons since 1995-96 and 1996-97.
2010 PING All-Southeast Region Team
Tyson Alexander, Florida
George Bryan IV, South Carolina
Wesley Bryan, South Carolina
Bud Cauley, Alabama
Sean Dale, North Florida
Andres Echavarria, Florida
Harris English, Georgia
Rhys Enoch, East Tennessee State
Hunter Hamrick, Alabama
Russell Henley, Georgia
David Holmes, Tennessee
Hudson Johnson, Vanderbilt
Brooks Koepka, Florida State
Mitchell Krywulyez, Augusta State
Andrew Loupe, LSU
Bryden Macpherson, Georgia
Tim McKenney, Florida
Henrik Norlander, Augusta State
John Peterson, LSU
Seamus Power, East Tennessee State
Jonathan Randolph, Ole Miss
Patrick Reed, Augusta State
Arnoud Vongvanij, Florida
Robin Wingardh, Tennessee
Paul Woodbury, South Carolina