Oct. 26, 2009

BATON ROUGE - Sophomore Joel Thelen shot a two-round total of five-under-par 137 to lead the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs at the first day of the David Toms Intercollegiate hosted by LSU at the Country Club of Louisiana.

Thelen shot a two-under-par 70 and then followed that up with a three-under-par 67 to trail only LSU's John Peterson (66-66=132) and Kent State's Mackenzie Hughes (68-66=134) in the 75-man field of competitors.

"Joel played great today," said Tech head coach Jeff Parks. "He is in good shape. He is going to try to go out tomorrow and catch those guys. As a team, we just need to get Cody (Santone) and Matthew (Harvey) to get a couple of their normal rounds going and we'll see what we can do.

"We're only two strokes behind 27th ranked Northwestern and only eight strokes out of being in the top four in this field, which includes 10 teams ranked in the Top 75 in the country. We played okay today. We had a couple of high numbers on a few holes which hurt us. We feel like we can play even better tomorrow."

As a team, Tech sits in 10th place with a two-round total of 573, trailing 34th ranked LSU (558), #40 Kent State (561), #47 Southeastern Louisiana (564), #29 North Florida (565), #54 Pepperdine (566), #70 Mississippi (566), Mississippi State (567), #27 Northwestern (571), and #56 Rice (572).

The Bulldogs are leading UAB (575), #45 Auburn (582), #75 South Alabama (583) and Louisiana-Lafayette (586).

In addition to Thelen's impressive day, Jonathan Bale also recorded an impressive day, shooting 73-68 for a two-round total of 141, good for 18th place in the individual standings.

With the addition of Thelen and Bale's impressive rounds, Parks now has five golfers who have recorded at least a 68 on their card during the fall season.

Cody Blankenship (73-75=148) and Matthew Harvey (75-73=-148) are tied for 56th place while Santone (74-76=150) is tied for 62nd.