BATON ROUGE – LSU climbed four spots up the leaderboard on Tuesday at the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional at the University Club. As a team the Tigers carded a 1-over 289 on Tuesday to finish 1-stroke back from fifth place ahead of the final round. The top five teams will advance to the NCAA Championship.
“I think we took care of the golf ball better today around the greens,” said interim head coach Andrew Nelson. “We didn’t have an issue hitting tee shots out here which has been great. You need to hit good tee shots to play well at this place and we’ve done just that. Around the greens yesterday we were sloppy, but today we did a better job chipping and putting. We’re going to make plenty of birdies out here, we just have to limit the double bogeys.”
Freshman Jay Mendell led the way in round two with a 3-under 69 to move himself to 1-over 145 and tied for fifteenth in the tournament. Mendell carded four birdies on his first nine holes of the day and made nine consecutive pars on his way back in.
“It feels great,” said Mendell. “I came into the day knowing I was playing well and I was hoping I would have a day where everything came together. I was able to make some putts to make it easy on myself. I started on the back nine and hit some shots close to give myself some easy pars and birdies. On the back nine I had to scramble a little more for par but I stayed in it and knew I just needed to give myself a chance.”
Connor Gaunt is tied for second in the individual race at 3-under 141 after two rounds. The graduate senior posted a 1-over 73 in round two. Gaunt carded four birdies on the day but bogeyed the final two holes to finish over par.
Lance Yates also finished the day 1-over 73 to help the Tigers in their ascent up the leaderboard in round two. The Baton Rouge native earned back-to-back birdies on holes No. four and five to improve to 1-under 35 on his final nine holes of the day.
Luke Haskew was the final contributing score at 2-over 74. Haskew moved into a tie for 27th place at 5-over after going 1-under 35 on his way in. The Baton Rouge native put together back-to-back birdies on Nos. four and five.
“Today we shot the second lowest round in the field,” said Nelson. “When you go out and shoot well, you can beat everybody. So, we’re going to have the same mentality tomorrow as we did today. Go out and shoot in the 3 lowest rounds of the day. If we do that, we can go out and beat the teams that we need to. We get to tee off on 10 as the first group off with the teams we’re trying to beat. This is our place and we’re gonna have the same mentality.”
The Tigers will be paired with fourth place Duke and fifth place Ohio State in the final round tomorrow. Schools positioned fourth through seventh are all within one stroke of each other and will make for an entertaining final round as just five spots are up for grabs.
LSU will tee off in round two on Wednesday starting as early as 8:30 in the morning. Live stats can be found at Golfstat.com. The top five teams and one individual not on those teams will advance to play in the NCAA Championship on May 24-28 at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif.
Pos Team R1–R2
1 Virginia 280-290 (-6)
2 Auburn 285-290 (-1)
3 Texas Tech 292-287 (+3)
4 Duke 291-291 (+6)
5 Ohio State 289-294 (+7)
6 LSU 295–289 (+8)
7 Houston 289-296 (+9)
T8 Oregon 292-299 (+15)
T8 S. Carolina 293-298 (+15)
10 Lipscomb 294-298 (+16)
11 Louisville 301-301 (+26)
12 Yale 320-304 (+48)
13 Loyola-Mary 310-315 (+49)
14 UAPB 321-327 (+72)
Pos Individual, School R1–R2
1 Ethan Evans, Duke 71-67 (-6)
T2 Neal Shipley, Ohio State 70-71 (-3)
T2 Connor Gaunt, LSU 68–73 (-3)
T2 Devan Patel, Virginia 67-74 (-3)
T5 Baard Skogen, Texas Tech 71-71 (-2)