BATON ROUGE — With a First-Team All-SEC selection already under his belt, LSU sophomore John Peterson added the title of All-American to his resume this season as he picked up PING Second-Team All-America and PING All-Southeast Region honors on Monday afternoon.
Peterson is the first LSU Tiger to earn All-America honors in six years when John Humphries had Honorable Mention All-America recognition following the 2002-03 season.
“This recognition is very well-deserved,” said LSU head coach Chuck Winstead. “I know that he has worked very hard over the last year and has done the things that we’ve asked of him. John had a tremendous spring with that approach to improving his game. His talent and future is bright, and we look forward to seeing him develop even more over the next two years.”
Peterson was brilliant all season long as he proved to be one of the nation’s premier players in the 2008-09 season. In the most prolific season by a Tiger in more than a decade, Peterson averaged 72.48 strokes per round while earning five top-five, six top-10 and eight top-20 finishes.
For his performance, Peterson finished the season ranked among the nation’s Top 20 players from Golfweek with a No. 20 national ranking in the Golfweek/Sagarin Individual Player Rankings.
The Fort Worth, Texas, native earned his first career individual tournament title at the John Hayt Invitational before wrapping up the season with four-straight third-place finishes, including at the SEC Championships and NCAA South Central Regional. Peterson is the first Tiger to earn a top-five finish at the SEC Championships since Humphries accomplished the feat in 2003.
He also helped lead the Tigers into the national spotlight this season as the team finished the year ranked No. 19 nationally in the final Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index.
Not only that, but LSU captured three tournament titles in a season for the first time in five years with victories at the Gopher Invitational (Sept. 12-14), the John Hayt Invitational (Feb. 22-24) and the Reunion Intercollegiate (April 6-7) to end the regular season.