The LSU golf programs didn’t have the outcomes they were looking for going into the Southeastern Conference championship weekend.
The men finished a disappointing 11th, while the women earned a seventh-place finish out of the 12 teams entered in both tournaments.
Going into the competition, the women were coming off of four consecutive top-10 finishes, and the men hadn’t finished in the top 10 all season.
The women traveled to Blessings Golf Course in Fayetteville, Ark., to take on the best of the SEC after earning a top-10 national ranking.
Auburn won the SEC title with a 52-over-par score, topping LSU by 21 strokes.
“It was a really, really hard golf course,” said LSU women’s coach Karen Bahnsen. “Unfortunately, we made too many mistakes along the way and were extremely disappointed with finishing [seventh], but we’re going to take this with us, work really hard and get ready for regionals and then the championship.”
It wasn’t all bad news for the Lady Tigers. Freshman Madelene Sagstrom finished at No. 4 overall with a score of seven over par, her third top five finish of the season.
“If you look at the scores, the low score for the day was 313, and that’s ridiculously high,” Bahnsen said. “These teams are the best teams in the country, and that’s just crazy. It was extremely hilly and penalizing, and we had 25 mph winds today.”
After spending two days at the bottom of the leaderboards at the Sea Island Golf Course in St. Simmons Island, Ga., the No. 17-ranked Tigers were able to make a slight move up, surpassing Mississippi State for the No. 11 spot in the SEC tournament by two strokes. LSU finished at 37-over-par, 49 strokes behind leader
Alabama.
Senior Sang Yi posted the lowest score for the Tigers with a seven-over-par for the weekend. Yi had solid rounds to start and end the tournament, posting even par in the first and one over in the third.
Freshman Stewart Jolly, sophomore Andrew Presley and senior Austin Gutgsell rounded out the Tigers’ recorded scores shooting nine-over-, 10-over- and 11-over-par, respectively.
 
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Contact Michael Gegenheimer at [email protected]