The sun was beaming down, there was a soft summer breeze sifting through the air and the cheers were not silenced on the 10th fairway of the Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst, North Carolina as 18-year-old Cohen Trolio trotted down to the angulating and turtleback green with his putter from 190 yards.
LSU Head Coach Chuck Winstead could not contain his excitement as he grinned from cheek to cheek and nodded to Assistant Coach Andrew Nelson. The reignition of the LSU Men’s Golf program started at that moment.
Trolio, prior to competing in the USGA Junior Amateur Championship in North Carolina, signed his letter of intent to swing clubs for the Purple and Gold. As an amateur, he was coined as the “Mississippi Kid” and was touted as a generational talent with a silky-smooth swing compared to the likes of Ernie Els and David Duval.
Trolio, the West Point, Mississippi native, was coming off a dominant stretch of junior golf, taking home first in almost every competition he played in. However, the most momentous and prestigious tournament he hailed victor at was the Mississippi State Amateur. Once the accolades and medals were accrued, he would gain a unique PGA Tour exemption to compete in the Sanderson Farms Tournament in Jackson, Mississippi in late September 2021. 
Trolio’s Tour performance was highly anticipated and exciting. The hometown kid was returning to compete with professional golfers; however, the Tigers were slated to travel to Ooltewah, Tennessee for the Scenic City Collegiate Tournament on the same dates as the PGA event. This was a new reality Trolio had yet experienced at the higher level of golf: The sport is now a team sport, with the four lowest scores counted toward the team total. Fortunately for the freshman, the Scenic City competition was canceled, and he was able to make his Tour debut.
Under the helm of Winstead, the team is balanced and now has the ideal setup from the coaching perspective heading into the spring half of their season. Last March, while Trolio was taking high school finals and the Tigers were in a slump, getting embarrassed at their home course and finishing third to last in a 15-team competition, Winstead said that they needed to focus on strengthening their bench’s production to get back to their winning ways.
Over the course of the summer that is what Winstead and Assistant Coach Andrew Nelson honed in on. They presented their case to several high schoolers nationally as to why LSU was the best program to join, and their message resonated with Trolio.
Trolio’s addition to the nine-man squad signified that Winstead and the LSU program still can pull in major recruits. In December 2021, Winstead would strike again, picking up Baton Rouge native and Louisiana junior golfer of the year, University High senior Luke Haskew.
While awaiting the arrival of the 6-foot, 4-inch University High senior, the Tigers have found their rhythm during their fall portion of the schedule. The squad, which features five seniors in the active rotation, had accumulated second, first and fourth place finishes during their three-tournament fall stint.
Now with the premiere of the Spring season completed the Tigers have their work cut out for them. At the Gators Invitational in Gainesville, Florida, this past weekend, Winstead and the team needed to find a way to carry over their success from the fall.
However, the Tigers fell short of expectations, posting 847 total, combined strokes for a seventh place finish, at a tournament with 15 teams. Senior Garrett Barber carried the team to a top-10 finish, posting the only sub-par score for the event, five-under-par. Barber’s red score was enough to propel him to tie for fifth on the individual leaderboard and was his third top-10 of the year.   
The event was held at the Mark Bostick Golf Course in Gainesville, Florida which is relatively short, playing at just over 6,700 yards and a par 70. Golf is no exception for home field advantage — just like any other sport — the host team, University of Florida took home gold for the tournament and Fred Biondi, University of Florida, a red-shirt junior, took home individual honors.
The spring portion of the schedule features five more tournaments before SEC and NCAA championships begin in late April. Next week the Tigers will pull out the jet and take a crack at west-golf golf at the The Prestige in sunny La Quinta, California. Then again in the first week of March, Coach Winstead and the Tigers will head south down scenic Route 101 to San Diego for a two-day tournament to conclude their west-coast swing. 

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Abby Kibler

LSU men's golf sophomore Connor Gaunt hits the ball out of the bunker Friday, Feb. 26, 2021 during the LSU Invitational hosted at the University Club on Memorial Tower Drive in Baton Rouge, La.