BATON ROUGE – The LSU women’s golf team, ranked 10th in the latest Scoreboard by Clippd NCAA performance rankings, returns to the course on Saturday for the Moon Golf Invitational at Melbourne, Florida.
UPDATE: The Tournament, scheduled to begin on Sunday, announced Friday evening that the event will now start at approximately 2 p.m. ET on Saturday because of a near 100 percent chance of storms on Sunday. The teams will have their practice round on Saturday morning as scheduled and then will attempt to play nine holes Saturday afternoon and whatever golf can be played at some point on Sunday to stay on schedule.
The Tigers are the defending champions of the event after shooting a 30-under par score of 834 on the Classic Course at Suntree Country Club.
Besides LSU and his Louisville, the field is loaded with No. 1 Wake Forest, No. 3 Arkansas, No. 9 Florida, No. 11 Ole Miss, No. 12 Texas A&M, No. 13 UCF, No. 14 Northwestern, No. 15 Auburn, No. 16 Duke and No. 17 Clemson. Also in the field is Florida State, Vanderbilt, Alabama, Virginia Tech and Augusta.
The teams may not have the warm, sunny weather they have played in for past events as the forecast calls for rains throughout Sunday and into Monday with cool temperatures.
“We are looking forward to going to back to a familiar place for us and a place that we have had a lot of success at — winning last year and a 2nd and 3rd place finish the two years prior,” said LSU Coach Garrett Runion. “Each time the weather has been a little different and this time it looks like we could get a lot of rain and wind which I actually don’t mind. It can separate the tough teams and the teams that are prepared for a challenge. It will definitely be a challenge, even if we happen to have great weather, as it’s a very strong field with 12 of the 17 teams ranked inside the top 25 in the country. Our ladies are looking to continue their great play from Puerto Rico and have a chance to compete this week.”
LSU is coming off a second-place finish at the Puerto Rico Classic, posting 9-under 855 to finish second, one shot behind Arkansas. Ingrid Lindblad, who won the Moon Golf event in 2022, was second in Puerto Rico at 8-under 208 as has she continues to hold the world No. 1 women’s amateur ranking for the 37 consecutive week.
Latanna Stone also played 54 holes under par in the tournament firing book end 70s to finish at 1-under 215 and in a group tied for 16th in Puerto Rico.
Lindblad and Stone will lead the Tiger charge again as LSU will bring the same lineup as in Puerto Rico. Joining the two graduate students will be senior Carla Tejedo, junior Aine Donegan and freshman Jordan Fischer.
Lindblad and Stone are the only LSU golfers to be on double figure multiple team wins for the women’s golf team with Stone a part of 12 team victories and Lindblad 11. Tejedo has been a part of eight team victories in her career.
For Stone and Fischer, it will be a homecoming of sort as they both grew up in Florida. Stone is from Riverview, Florida and Fischer, originally from Germany, now lives in the North Fort Myers area.
Play is scheduled for 54 holes as of now concluding on Tuesday. LSU will be paired with Louisville and Auburn in the opening round with live scoring on Golfstat.com.