BATON ROUGE – The LSU women’s golf team starts play in one of college golf’s “major” events, the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate Monday at the Long Cove Club in Hilton Head lsland, South Carolina.
Once again, this year the Rucker will be the only women’s play only regular season event televised on The Golf Channel. Coverage Monday through Wednesday is scheduled for 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Once again, the field for the tournament, named and sponsored by the country music star and former lead singer of Hootie & The Blowfish, is one of the best in the nation and may be second only to the NCAA Championship field at the end of the season.
A total of 12 of the top 30 teams are in the field led by No. 5 Auburn, No. 6 Wake Forest, No. 8 Arkansas, No. 9 Texas, No. 12 Duke, No. 14 Vanderbilt, No. 15 Ole Miss, No. 18 South Carolina, No. 20 Northwestern, No. 21 Arizona State, No. 24 Arizona and No. 26 Florida State.
Also in the field with LSU are Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio State and Georgia.
LSU and South Carolina are the defending co-champs from last year with LSU winning the Darius Rucker guitar trophy based on a scorecard playoff at the end of 54 holes.
LSU has won 2-of-the-last-3 events, also capturing the Rucker guitar in 2023.
LSU’s lineup will be sophomores Rocio Tejedo and Francesca Fiorellini, seniors Taylor Riley and Elsa Svensson and freshman Ryleigh Knaub,
Svensson moved up 27 spots on the final day of the team’s last outing at the Moon Golf Invitational with a 6-under par 66 to finish in third place. Knaub also had her first collegiate top 10 with a T10 finish in the event.
Fiorellini leads the team in stroke average at 71.47, while Svensson is at 71.80 for the season. Riley is at 72.00.
Live scoring for the event can be found at https://scoreboard.clippd.com/tournaments/239346/scoring/team. Play is scheduled for 18 holes Monday through Wednesday.