The No. 14 LSU golf team will compete for its second John Hayt Intercollegiate Championship at the Sawgrass Country Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., lasting Sunday to Tuesday.
The Tigers will take on three top-20 teams this weekend, including Southeastern Conference rival No. 7 Arkansas.
“We’ve got to be prepared to handle adversity,” said LSU coach Chuck Winstead. “We’ve had success in this tournament before, albeit with generally older guys on the team, but the success on the team is really born out of being tough.”
In last season’s event, the Tigers fell to seven over par and a third-place finish despite ending the first day at four under par.
The only returning golfer for the Tigers this time is sophomore Andrew Presley, who shot eight over par on the weekend to finish tied for No. 32.
Senior Austin Gutgsell won’t be making the trip with the rest of his teammates despite being the only other golfer to have competed at Sawgrass due to what Winstead refers to as “not quite earning the right to play.” Gutgsell shot a 15 over par last season and a one-over-par performance that put him in a tie for fifth in 2010.
However, senior Sang Yi has played in two out of the three John Hayt intercollegiate events in which LSU has competed. Yi shot a four over par in his 2010 campaign to finish No. 12 in his most recent event at the Ponte Vedra Beach golf course.
Because of the youth of the team with only one upperclassman, both Yi and Presley are being relied upon to help lead a group that has never seen the course.
“We’re just making sure their tee shots are starting on line and they’re in play,” Yi said. “That’s probably the biggest thing, that you have to be mentally tough to play there. The key to it is to be able to have a second shot, which means you have to hit the fairway.”
The team’s youth may not be the most troubling factor for LSU, but rather the weather and course itself.
“Conditions [are] number one. It’s not like the fall where you have 90-degree weather with no wind,” Yi said. “It’s springtime in February, in Jacksonville, right off the coast. You can get hot days, but the main thing is it’s really windy. It could be cold, it could be raining; you really don’t know what you’re going to get.”
____
Contact Michael Gegenheimer at [email protected]