ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Georgia – The No. 7 ranked LSU men’s golf team, after a strong regular season that included four team tournament victories, now gets its post season underway on Wednesday at the annual Southeastern Conference Men’s Golf Championship.
The event is back in St. Simons Island for the 24th consecutive year and the Sea Island Golf Club’s Seaside Course. The par 70 layout, that plays right at 7,000 yards, is routinely ranked among the top 100 courses in the United States. A Tom Fazio redesign of the 1929 classic by famed golf architects Harry Colt and Charles Alison, tied the original Seaside with the old Marshside course.
According to Sea Island tour professional Davis Love III, the course has gone from “18 holes that didn’t match into 18 matchless holes.” The Seaside and Plantation courses host the RSM Classic on the PGA Tour in November each year.
“I’ve been here before with South Carolina (as an assistant),” said LSU Coach Jake Amos. “The last time was in 2016 so it’s been a while but I remember the course. We’ve obviously got a couple guys that played it. Alfons (Bondesson) played it with Missouri and Jay (Mendell) played it for LSU last year. But we’ve also got three new guys. So I also think that’s a good thing. I think when you have a place where you’ve been a lot, maybe haven’t played that well, we do not have the scars, so it’s probably a good thing.
“I like the course,” he said. “Whenever you get to play a PGA tour course, it runs like clockwork and everything is first class. The SEC does an amazing job The course will be setup for fast and fair. I think the best teams will win. I like it.”
The Tigers last won the event in 2015 in the next-to-last year of strictly stroke play in the event. LSU has won the conference championship tournament 16 times, but only once since 1987.
First-year Coach Jake Amos has had the Tigers in the top 10 of the NCAA Scoreboard by Clippd performance rankings all season and has wins on several different types of golf courses this season.
The Tigers opened the 2024-25 wraparound season with a win in the opening tournament at Knoxville and in October captured the Blessing Collegiate Invitational over the very tough Blessings Golf Club tract in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
In the spring, the Tigers won back-to-back events. First, in the home state at the Louisiana Classics in Lafayette and then against a stellar field at the Pauma Valley Collegiate in California, both in March.
Now comes the hopefully five-day event for the Tigers that starts with three days of match play and concludes with two days and three rounds of match play.
The first goal is to make the top eight after 54 holes to advance to the match play round against a field that includes six-of-the-top-eight teams and 13-of-the-top 31 teams in the NCAA Scoreboard by Clippd rankings that were updated on Monday.
In ranking order the teams are: No. 1 Ole Miss, No. 2 Auburn, No. 3 Texas, No. 6 Oklahoma, No. 7 LSU, No. 8 Florida, No. 15 Alabama, No. 17 Texas A&M, No. 18 Vanderbilt, No. 20 South Carolina, No. 26 Tennessee, No. 29 Mississippi State, No. 31 Georgia, No. 59 Arkansas, No. 69 Kentucky and No. 91 Missouri.
“It’s the same with NCAAs and everything with the top eight deal,” said Amos of the team’s focus. “I’m trying to win stroke play. We have ranking goals; we need to win (stroke play) to be a number one seed in the regionals. That’s kind of my goal and the goal of the team is to win. Everything else will take care of itself. My philosophy that’s going to be the goal, stroke play and match play. I think there’s not going to be a lot of people who will want to play us in match play.”
LSU will be looking to make the match play rounds for the first time since 2022 when the Tigers advanced to the semifinals. The Tigers have made the match play round four times since match play began in 2017.
Coach Amos will go with a lineup that has been playing well for the Tigers as of late with senior transfer from East Tennessee, Algot Kleen (70.11 stroke average); freshman Arni Sveinsson from Iceland (70.50); Lafayette sophomore Jay Mendell (71.27), Missouri transfer junior Alfons Bondesson (71.13) and another ETSU transfer, junior Matty Dodd-Berry from England (72.17).
Kleen has had a good season with four top fives, including a win that has him ranked 10th in the Scoreboard rankings and No. 9 in PGA Tour University. Svensson, who also has a tournament win and four top fives is ranked No. 19 in the NCAA. Mendell is also ranked inside the top 100 in the NCAA at No. 83.
Bondesson who tied for the title at the Louisiana Classic, is ranked 110, but has come from a ranking of 300 at the start of March.
LSU is going off the 10th tee in the 8 a.m. ET, 7 a.m. CT opening pairing off that nine.
Live scoring for the event can be found at the green SEC Men’s Golf Championship tab on Golfstat.com and updates during the round @LSUMensGolf and @LSUKent on “X”.