BATON ROUGE – The 14 men’s golf teams of the Southeastern Conference, including LSU, meet beginning Sunday at the SEC Match Play tournament hosted by Jerry Pate at the Old Overton Club in Vestavia Hills, Alabama.
This unique tournament which combines some of the elements the Tigers will face later in the spring season at post-season events of stroke play and match play is hosted and named after the successful Alabama golfer who in his resume was able to win both the United State Amateur and United States Open in his career.
The tournament format this year opens Sunday with 36 holes of stroke play beginning at 8:30 am on the par 70, 7,204-yard layout followed by the final 18 holes of stroke play on Monday. On Tuesday the tournament reverts to match play with the top two qualifiers from stroke play meeting for the title. The other 12 teams will meet in an East versus West match play format.
LSU’s lineup for this event will feature sophomore Cohen Trolio in his first start of the season along with grad student Garrett Barber, junior Drew Doyle, freshman Luke Haskew and junior Nicholas Arcement.
Barber finished third in his last start at the Jim Rivers Intercollegiate (Sept. 11-13) with rounds of 65-71-71 to finish at 9-under 207. Through the first two starts of the season he is averaging 69.33. Haskew posted a top 10 in the Jim Rivers with a 208 total and is also for three rounds averaging 69.33. Doyle through the first two tournaments is averaging 69.50 and Arcement comes in at 70.17 for LSU’s two stops at South Bend, Indiana and in Northeast Louisiana.
Trolio advanced to match play in the United States Amateur and was second on the team in stroke average a year ago at 71.30 for 33 rounds in earning All-Freshman SEC team honors and selection on the PING Southeast All-Region team.
LSU will play with Missouri and Georgia for the first two rounds and will start in the shotgun start pairing around the mid-front nine on holes 4-7. Live scoring will be available at Golfstat.com.
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