BATON ROUGE – The nationally-ranked LSU women’s golf team opens the 2026 fall portion of its 2026-27 wraparound season in a familiar place, Hanahan, South Carolina at the Cougar Classic at iconic Yeamans Hall Club outside Charleston.
This will be the fourth straight year the Tigers have started the season at this tournament and the 12th time for the Tigers to play in the event since the start of the 2005-06 season.
LSU is ranked No. 14 by The Golf Channel and No. 16 by Golfweek in the preseason women’s college golf polls as Coach Garrett Runion is back for his ninth season at the helm of the program.
The Tigers will have three-of-the-five players in its opening lineup that started for the Tigers in their 16th place finish in the NCAA Golf Championships in Carlsbad, California in May in juniors Rocio Tejedo, Francesca Fiorellini and Josefin Widal. Tejedo and Widal are in their third year in the Tiger program with Fiorellini teeing it up for the second straight year after a freshman season at UCLA.
LSU will also have in its first tournament lineup sophomore Ryleigh Knaub who is coming off a round of 16 finish in the United States Women’s Amateur last month and freshman Raegan Denton, who earned preseason All-America honors and was fourth in the April Augusta National Women’s Am.
“There has been a lot going on within college athletics since we last teed it up and I am looking forward to finally getting back on the course and seeing the girls compete,” said Coach Runion. “We have a younger team, with no seniors this year, but we have a very experienced and talented team that I am looking forward to seeing what they can accomplish this season. I am expecting our three juniors, Rocio Tejedo, Francesca Fiorellini, and Josefin Widal to carry a lot of the work load and help the underclassman maintain the standard we have set here. In addition to those three juniors returning we have two sophomores – Ryleigh Knaub and Lucia Iraola. There are also two talented freshmen in Raegan Denton and Victoria Kristensen, both who will be getting valuable college experience this week.”
The Cougar Classic has another strong field this year to play over the par 71 layout that is 6,269 yards long.
Besides LSU and host Charleston, the remainder of the field is Arkansas, Baylor, Boston College, Charlotte, Clemson, Furman, Florida, Georgia, Miami, NC State, Ole Miss, Rutgers, Tennessee, UCF, Vanderbilt and Wisconsin.
“This will be our fourth year in a row kicking off the season at the Cougar Classic<” said Runion. “It’s a great tournament at a great course, Yeamans Hall Club, and a great field with seven SEC schools, four ACC, two Big 10 schools two Big 12 schools and a host of others. We have had success there and been a great place to start our season and looking forward to this tournament and the whole year.”
It will be an early test for the teams as it is a 36-hole opening day, followed by the final 18 holes of the 54-hole tournament on Tuesday. LSU will be off at 7:50 a.m. CT with host Charleston and NC State.
Live scoring can be found on the Scoreboard.Clippd.com website at the Cougar Classic tab.
Also, Iraola and Kristensen will tee it up as individual players at TPC Louisiana in the Green Wave Classic which begins on Tuesday.