Rhode Island’s men’s golf team is set to compete in the Sam Ryder Intercollegiate, which begins Monday at LPGA International’s Hills Course in Daytona Beach, Florida. The event, hosted by Stetson University, will feature 13 teams and a total of 84 players.
Representing Rhode Island are Luke Stennett, Aidan O’Donovan, Josiah Tong, Tyler Bruneau and Tony Liu. In the opening round on Monday, Rhode Island golfers will be grouped with competitors from Lipscomb, Baylor and Campbell.
“This is another tournament with a great field including schools from Texas, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas,” said Rhode Island head coach Gregg Burke. “It is awfully hard to prepare with all the snow on the ground back home, but we are used to doing without so we’ll use that as motivation.”
The field includes several nationally ranked programs according to Scoreboard rankings as of February 25: UTEP (No. 75), Stetson (No. 95) and Florida Atlantic (No. 99). Rhode Island currently holds the No. 112 spot out of 311 ranked schools and leads the Atlantic 10 Conference by four spots over VCU.
Rhode Island has won four out of seven tournaments this season and has an overall record of 67-10-2. The team’s most recent competition was at the UNC Greensboro Palmas Del Mar Collegiate in Puerto Rico on February 9-10 where they finished sixth. Recent heavy snowfall in Rhode Island has limited practice time for the team.
“We’ve had a rocky start to the semester in other areas but we’re using this as a re-start of sorts,” Burke said. “We’ve asked a number of players to step up in leadership to get us over the hump. Our talent is there, we just need to do more things better.”
The Sam Ryder Intercollegiate consists of two rounds on Monday followed by a final round on Tuesday; play begins each day at 8 a.m. Last year’s event—then called the Daytona Beach Intercollegiate—was won by Troy University. The tournament now honors PGA Tour professional and former Stetson player Sam Ryder.
The Hills Course measures 6,984 yards with a par of 72. Designed by Arthur Hills and opened in 1997, it features natural wetlands along with narrow pine corridors and small greens.
