BATON ROUGE – The LSU Men’s golf team is set to tee off at the R.E. Lamkin Invitational in San Diego, Calif. on Monday morning at the San Diego Country Club.
The 54-hole event will begin with 36 holes on Monday, followed by a final round of 18 on Tuesday. The track is a 7,033 yard par-72 that will be played from its championship tees. It will be a shotgun start set to tee off at 10 a.m. CST.
The field in San Diego is good, with two teams in the top ten in the country and a lot of schools from the west coast,” said interim head coach Andrew Nelson. “This is a good opportunity to go compete with some really talented teams and players.We need to see how we look and where we stand playing in a good field and away from home.”
The invitational hosts an impressive field of 16 that features three teams ranked inside the top 20, according to the Scoreboard collegiate rankings. Those inside the top 20 include Washington (4), Georgia Tech (13), and New Mexico (19).
LSU is currently ranked 29th and will be joined by BYU (43), Cal Poly, Colorado (70), Colorado State (57), Fresno State (48), Hawai’i, LSU (29), Loyola Marymount (41), Saint Mary’s, San Diego, San Diego State (31), Santa Clara, and Wyoming.
“There is a constant balancing act of motivating and building confidence,” added Nelson. “We have a talented team that wants to be great and win– it’s hard to win. Our focus right now is taking care of ourselves and not looking too far ahead. Take care of today and compete.”
The Tigers are coming off of a second place team finish at the Hal Williams Collegiate in Mobile, Ala. in February. As a team, LSU finished at 22-under 830 and two strokes off the lead. Jay Mendell took home individual honors at 10-under 203, and was followed by his teammate, Connor Gaunt, at 9-under 204.
Mendell’s outing in Mobile earned himself SEC Freshman of the week honors, his third recognition of the season. The Lafayette native follows Gaunt with an average of 70.89 and has three top tens.
Gaunt leads the Tigers with a 69.39 scoring average through all six events this season. Gaunt has continued to improve each outing after he was named to the Haskins Award Watchlist in the Fall. The graduate student has finished in the top five in five of his six tournaments played.
Gaunt and Mendell will be joined by Drew Doyle, Lance Yates, and Luke Haskew to round out the starting five. Leo Johnasson will be competing as an individual. Doyle led the Tigers last season with a 71.11 scoring average and is currently averaging 71.33 through three events.
Yates will be making his sixth start for the Tigers after transferring to LSU for his final season. Haskew will be making his fourth appearance this season. Haskew put his name in the record books in the Fall as he shot a 9-under 63 at the Jackson T. Stephens Cup. Haskew has now carded a 63 in each of his first two seasons at LSU.
Live scoring will be available through golfstat.com and live updates can be found across all social platforms at @lsumensgolf.