Tiger fans, we are now only 18 days away from the start of LSU golf. On Aug. 22, women’s Head Coach Garret Runion and the SEC finalized the fall schedule. This season will be limited to three in-conference tournaments, and all play will be held in the Southeastern region.
“My team is very excited to play and is looking forward to playing in, basically, the SEC Championship three times in a row,” Runion told lsusports.net. “It will be a great test and should show who took advantage of their time this summer to keep their bodies and games in shape and who didn’t.”
The first tournament will be the Blessings Collegiate Invitational, hosted by the University of Arkansas. Blessings Golf Course, which held the 2019 NCAA championship, will also hold the first tournament for the men’s squad as well. Both the men’s and women’s tournament play will be aired on the Golf Channel.
“You can’t beat having a fall tournament on the Golf Channel,” LSU Director of golf Chuck Winstead told lsusports.net. “That will give our fans and families a chance to watch the action when they normally don’t have the opportunity to do so. It puts LSU and the SEC on the national stage and gives us a chance to showcase our talents.”
The second tournament will be hosted by Mississippi State University at the Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point for the Ally tournament. The women’s squad will have a comfortable look at the new style of play while still in a pandemic.
The third tournament, the Liz Murphey Fall Collegiate Classic, will be hosted by the University of Georgia. Following this tournament, the Tigers should be back in the full swing of tournament play and prepared to conquer the spring season.
The women’s team is coming off a great season that got cut short this past spring. The Tigers finished the season ranked No. 12 by Golfweek and No. 13 by GolfStat. They won three of the seven tournaments they competed in and finished in the top three in six of the seven tournaments. The team wishes to pick up where it left off last season, bringing back its top five players: Ingrid Lindbald, Lattana Stone, Kendall Griffin, Alden Wallace and Kiana Oshiro.
This offseason, the squad strengthened its depth by recruiting two renowned international players: Jessica Bailey and Carla Tejedo Mulet. Bailey, a native of Leicester, England, is a junior transfer from Daytona State University, where she was a major contributor to her No. 2 ranked team in the NJCAA. Mulet, a native of Castellon de Plana, Spain, is hoping to leave her mark on SEC golf. She is currently ranked No. 45 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings.
This team has unfinished business from last season and a title for the taking. This season will excite the LSU community, giving the women’s golf program the attention it deserves.