CARLSBAD, California \u2013\u2013 It\u2019s almost like a transition day here at the OMNI La Costa Resort & Spa on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
As Stanford and Southern Cal, women\u2019s golf\u2019s No. 1 and No. 2 teams, meet in the championship match (prime time college golf in the Eastern and Central time zones on The Golf Channel), a crew will follow soon behind turning the 6,300-yard layout for the women into something that should be in the realm of the 7,480 yards the course played at a year ago for the men.<\/p>\n
The par 3s last year were 190, 203, 245 and 162 (the 16th over the water as far back as possible) and the par 5s at 622 (across at least one road\/cart path) at No. 2 to 557 on the famed par 5 18th hole.<\/p>\n
When I talked to LSU men\u2019s head coach Jake Amos Tuesday evening here, he was anticipating getting it going with his Tigers on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
And why shouldn\u2019t he? The Tigers come in ranked seventh in the nation in the NCAA\/Scoreboard rankings in a year in which 7-of-the-top-10 seeds for the event are from the SEC. He also remembers the \u201cregional going to regional\u201d theory in which his Tigers couldn\u2019t get through last year as the one seed. That left a bitter taste in the team and coach\u2019s minds and they were determined to take care of that this year in Marana, Arizona.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always in the back of your mind what happened the year before and missing out,\u201d the second-year LSU men\u2019s coach said. \u201cThat\u2019s the thing with regionals, you can get sent anywhere. We\u2019re not baseball or tennis or softball, where if you are good, you\u2019re hosting at home. We have to get sent wherever, no matter how good we are, and that\u2019s always the risk. It\u2019s by far the most stressful week of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most stressful week of the year and they got sent to a place where they had to shoot 30-under par to advance as the third of five teams. It\u2019s also the one tournament where anywhere in the top five is perfect, but things have to work to shoot a number like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a nice regional, with the teams that went there, but you are going to the desert and altitude, so how do your guys handle those changing elements?\u201d Amos said. \u201cLuckily, we\u2019re a very experienced group and they handled it great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coach Amos very much realizes what it means to bring LSU back to the national championship event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where we need to be like every sport LSU needs to be playing the national championship event. I think they\u2019ve made that pretty evident with the people they\u2019ve hired, and even when they were hiring me, that\u2019s what they wanted to do. I took East Tennessee State four years in a row. It\u2019s tough getting here. You always appreciated it \u2026 It\u2019s always a privilege to be at a national championship, but after last year, you never take it for granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut now that we are here it\u2019s fully on to, we are supposed to be here and we\u2019re supposed to win it.\u201d<\/p>\n
If anything, the sluggish performance by LSU for really the first time all season in the SEC Championship event in Georgia, may have been the best wakeup call.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a massive wake-up call,\u201d said Amos. \u201cI actually personally blame it on myself. Arnie (Sveinsson) was injured the week before, and we had a little bit too much focus on that. I think we tried to rush him back. I didn\u2019t appreciate how deep we were as a squad. It was a bit of distraction, but it was a massive wake-up call for me and the guys. We\u2019re too good to be sloppy.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of our goals this year was to be the best at everything that requires zero talent, and we didn\u2019t do that that week. So it got us back to our fundamentals of what we believe in and it was the perfect thing that happened. Our message to the guys was that the only team not disappointed was Ole Miss. Everyone else is disappointed whether you are disappointed early in the week or end of the week.\u201d<\/p>\n
How good is this LSU team? Their record speaks for itself. One tournament outside a top four finish with three wins. That one tournament was the SECs, finishing 12, which they followed up with a 30-under performance in the regional.<\/p>\n
This team has all five players ranked in the top 151 in the nation in college golf. We\u2019ll talk about them individually in my Thursday pre-opening round story here on LSUsports.net, but when the coach and the players are excited to be here and ready to play and not just happy to be here, that is a big difference. This coach is excited to be here, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am excited because this is the goal at the end of the year,\u201d said Coach Amos. \u201cThe first thing I ask every team meeting is who thinks we can win a national championship? And I\u2019ve said it every single meeting I\u2019ve ever had as a head coach, and the guys believe it. I believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the future looks pretty bright as well for the Tigers and the coach sees it and believes it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fun thing is we only lose one guy out of this team. We\u2019ve built it where we can make a little run if we get it going, so yeah, I\u2019m excited to see what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
BEFORE WE GO<\/p>\n
I have to say the quality of golf on the women\u2019s side was really pretty special. That LSU was just one shot off the number to make a top-15 cut for the sixth year in a row was a very good run for women\u2019s team. The one-shot situation Garrett Runion talked about was too cruel for the Tigers at the end, but it brought an epic five-hole playoff over the course of some 13 hours of time that will be remembered by a lot of family and friends of graduated senior Taylor Riley for a long time.<\/p>\n
The chip-in at 17 for par to stay alive, the win at 17 the next morning to advance and in the final round she birdied 17. The fitting birdie on her final hole of her career with Golf Channel friend Jim Gallagher, Jr., calling it put a wonderful wrap on a four-year career that included three starts in national championships.<\/p>\n
Gallagher, whose wife and daughter both played at LSU, with his Coach O \u201cGeaux Tigers\u201d impression after the birdie was great indeed. It\u2019s on our LSU women\u2019s golf social if you haven\u2019t seen it.<\/p>\n
Speaking of family, hard to believe it\u2019s been the mid-1990s since Taylor\u2019s mom (then Michelle Louviere) played for LSU as part of the \u201cThree Amigas.\u201d Father Chris had success on the PGA Tour, made the Ryder Cup team, had two top four major finishes and was golf coach at San Diego for several years. Great to see them on the course all week here at La Costa.<\/p>\n
So one tournament concludes on this day and later in the evening the course will transform for a Thursday practice round for 30 men\u2019s teams hopefully \u201cexcited\u201d to be here. Thanks as always for \u201cGeauxing Lowe\u201d at the \u201cVillage by the Sea.\u201d Time to get some more steps in at La Costa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARLSBAD, California \u2013\u2013 It\u2019s almost like a transition day here at the OMNI La Costa Resort & Spa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[235,44,237,238,236,234,233,113,255],"class_list":["post-6822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-geaux-tigers","tag-golf","tag-homepage-feature-headline","tag-latest-news","tag-louisiana","tag-louisiana-state-university","tag-lsu","tag-lsu-tigers","tag-men-s-golf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}