CARLSBAD, California \u2013 A season of success has LSU at the pinnacle of men\u2019s college golf as the No. 7 LSU men\u2019s golf team begins play here Friday in the NCAA Division I Men\u2019s Golf Championship at the OMNI La Costa Resort and Spa.<\/p>\n
The Tigers begin the opening 54 holes of the event in the preferred late-early tee times, starting at 12:45 p.m. PT (2:45 p.m. Baton Rouge time) off the 10th tee. LSU will play in the morning wave on Saturday.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a playing setup most coaches love to have and LSU second-year coach Jake Amos is no exception.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually one of the only advantages you get from having a good season. If you are ranked in the top 15, you get that wave,\u201d Amos said. \u201cYou can see how the course is playing in the morning. You can change, adjust for the afternoon and then you really get to separate yourself to get the good tee time (for Sunday).\u201d<\/p>\n
While it is important, there is another message from Amos about the job ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal this year is from what I\u2019m learned in the past.\u201d said Coach Amos. \u201cIt is not to get lost in the big picture of the 30 teams. It\u2019s more just try and win each day, in your wave. If you can be the best team in your wave every single day. To me, that\u2019s how you get through.\u201d<\/p>\n
LSU had three team wins in the wrap around 2025-26 season with finishes no worse than fourth in 10-of-11 team starts in the play five-count four format of college golf.<\/p>\n
The Tigers will go with juniors Jay Mendell (69.43) and Noah McWilliams (69.48), both from Louisiana (Mendell from Lafayette and McWilliams from Benton) along with freshman Dan Hayes of England (70.09), sophomore Arni Sveinsson of Iceland (70.15) and senior Matty Dodd-Berry (70.39) of England. Baton Rouge senior Luke Askew (73.46) is the alternate.<\/p>\n
Mendell and Haskew of LSU played in the 2024 championship, the first year it was played here at La Costa, and Dodd-Berry was part of the 2024 team that Coach Jake Amos brought here from East Tennessee State. They have an idea what they will be seeing when they step on the 10th tee to start tournament play on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cArni has had a bit of injury \u2026 but he\u2019s really starting to play well,\u201d said Coach Amos about his team. \u201cMcWilliams has improved tremendously. Jay Mendell has had a phenomenal spring and obviously, they are both Louisiana guys. One guy that really doesn\u2019t get a lot of attention is our freshman, Dan Hayes. He\u2019s incredibly consistent. He\u2019s always there. He\u2019s been our absolute rock. For a freshman, that\u2019s unusual. Matty has been playing well. Individually, I genuinely mean this \u2013 one through five \u2013 anyone could win it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there were a lot of teams that didn\u2019t want us to be here because we\u2019re just starting to click. Arnie\u2019s starting to play better. Matty\u2019s playing better. Jay and Noah have been great, and Dan has been super consistent. So, I promise you, all of them are trying to win it, which is a good thing for the team.<\/p>\n
In the NCAA\/Scoreboard rankings, all five LSU starters are ranked in the top 151 of Division I college golf.<\/p>\n
Mendell is at No. 47, McWilliams is ranked from 62, Sveinsson 73, Hayes 126 and Dodd-Berry 151.<\/p>\n
The team went through the lengthy process of the Thursday practice round as 29 teams went through their allowed 18 holes on the course. BYU, which does not play Sunday events, had its practice round before the women\u2019s championship match on Wednesday and will play its Sunday round on Thursday after the practice round.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think (the course) really suits our games,\u201d said Coach Amos, who took four consecutive teams to the NCAA at East Tennessee State prior to coming to LSU before the 2024-25 season. \u201cWe\u2019re good ball strikers. We\u2019re very disciplined. I think you have to be aggressive off the team, but you also have to be very disciplined and focused into the greens. You need to miss in the right spots, and we work on that a lot, so I\u2019m excited about that. We will get to see how it\u2019s playing Friday morning before we go out and we can kind of adjust after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
LSU will be making its 44th appearance in the NCAA Championship, having won the national championship in 1940, 1942, 1947, 1955 and most recently, 2015, at the Concession Club in Bradenton, Florida.<\/p>\n
Three times, the individual national champion has come from LSU \u2013 Fred Haas Jr. in 1937; Earl Stewart in 1971 and John Peterson in 2011.<\/p>\n
The teams will play 18-hole rounds each day through Sunday, when the first cut will take place to 15 teams. After a final round on Monday, the individual champion will be crowned and the top eight teams will begin match play on Tuesday with a national champion crowned on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
For the first two rounds, LSU will be paired with Ole Miss and North Carolina. Ole Miss is the No. 8 seed and North Carolina is seeded ninth.<\/p>\n
Live scoring for the event can be found at Scoreboard.clippd.com. Live streaming will be available through Babygrande on Golfchannel.com beginning around 12:30 p.m. PT through the conclusion of the first round.<\/p>\n
NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS
Carlsbad, California \u2013 OMNI La Costa Resort & Spa North Course
First Round Tee Waves
All Times Central Time
1st Tee
8:52 a.m. \u2013 Georgia, Florida State, Southern California
9:47 a.m. \u2013 Mississippi State, Arkansas State, Purdue
10:42 a.m. \u2013 Individual Qualifier Pairing<\/p>\n
2:12 p.m. \u2013 Virginia, Oklahoma State, Arkansas
3:07 p.m. \u2013 Vanderbilt, Arizona, Arizona State
4:02 p.m. \u2013 Individual Pairing<\/p>\n
10th tee
8:30 a.m. \u2013 Tennessee, Texas A&M, BYU
9:25 a.m. \u2013 Duke, UCLA, Louisville
10:20 a.m. \u2013 San Diego, Chattanooga, Memphis<\/p>\n
1:50 p.m. \u2013 Auburn, Florida, Texas
2:45 p.m. \u2013 LSU, Ole Miss, North Carolina
3:40 p.m. \u2013 Pepperdine, Stanford, Oklahoma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARLSBAD, California \u2013 A season of success has LSU at the pinnacle of men\u2019s college golf as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8509,"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-8508","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\/8508","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=8508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}