Feb. 16, 2011
Media Guide
Fall Stats
HOUSTON - Louisiana Tech will open its 2011 spring schedule Monday when the Bulldog golfers head to Houston to compete in the 11th annual Rice Intercollegiate presented by Saxon at the Westwood Golf Club.
Head coach Jeff Parks and Co. will compete in the 15-team event played at the par 72, 7,184-yard course that has hosted the event since 2007. Westwood Golf Club, originally founded in 1928, has the distinction of being the second oldest private golf club in Houston.
The Bulldogs team next week will consist of freshmen Travis Wilmore and Jack Lempke, sophomore Sam Forgan, junior Jonathan Bale and senior Clinton Shepard.
Shepard led the Bulldogs in the fall, recording a team-low 72.53 scoring average in five tournaments. Shepard, Lempke, Forgan and Bale all recorded top 15 finishes in at least one fall tournament while Bale was Tech's top finisher at last year's Rice Intercollegiate finishing ninth.
"I'm excited about the spring," Parks said. "I'm anxious to get the season kickoff off and I know our guys are as well. We've had some great off-season work with a lot of it being in the weightroom, getting bigger, faster and stronger for golf. We are employing some new mental strategies that I think will pay off for us in our tournament play."
The field for the event consists of Bowling Green, Florida Gulf Coast, Houston, Houston Baptist, Louisiana-Monroe, LA Tech, Miami (Ohio), Missouri State, Nebraska, New Mexico State, Oral Roberts, Rice, Texas-San Antonio, Texas State and Wichita State.
Five of the teams are currently ranked in the Top 100 of the country, including 50th ranked New Mexico State, 61st ranked Houston, 85th ranked Miami (Ohio), 92nd ranked LA Tech and 96th ranked Missouri State.
Parks said that his team has been working on the mental aspect of the game during the off-season and he hopes to see the results of this.
"If winning is not your goal, then I don't know why you would be playing" Parks said. "Our goal is to win every time. Our outcome goal is winning. However, when we play, we have to be focused on the process and not the outcome. Winning shouldn't be on your mind as you play. If we just focus on the process and not the outcome, then we will have success."
Parks also said that over the last week, the warmer weather in the area has allowed his team to get out on the course - something that will be an advantage over some of the teams in next week's event.
"It's been nice to get out and hit some balls and fine tune our games," Parks said. "There are probably a lot of teams that haven't even seen grass yet. They've been hitting inside a building with all of this snow. A lot of them probably haven't been outside."
Rice is the defending champion of the event, easily defeating the field last year as the bested the second-place team by 19 strokes.
The tournament format will consist of 36 holes on Monday and 18 holes on Tuesday.
