BATON ROUGE – It’s time to get back to work for the LSU women’s golf team as they open the spring portion of the season in Puerto Rico for the Puerto Rico Classic at the Grand Reserve Golf Course at Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.

The Tigers are 16th in the Scoreboard by Clippd NCAA performance rankings entering the spring and the road to Carlsbad, California where the NCAA Championships will be conducted for the second straight year at the Omni LaCosta resort. LSU will compete in five regular season events before the SEC Championships in mid-April in Florida and the NCAAs in May.

As part of Coach Garrett Runion’s belief to put the team in against top competition, the tournament, which is hosted annually by Purdue has 18 teams in the competition. The tournament is conducted at the same course where the LSU men will play in a week and where the PGA conducts its annual Puerto Rico open in early March.

“We are looking forward to the start of our spring season and going back to Puerto Rico for the second straight year,” said Coach Runion. “Even though we have a very different team from last year with the graduation of three of our players, I feel like we have some unfished business after finishing second by one shot a year ago.”

Joining host Purdue and the Tigers in the event are: Arkansas, Auburn, Georgia Southern, Furman, Iowa State, Kansas State, Kent State, Michigan State, Minnesota, North Florida, North Texas, Northwestern, Ole Miss, UNCW, UTSA and Vanderbilt.

“The field is also a little different than last year but still very strong with 10 teams ranked inside the top 35 in the country. It will be a good test to see where we are at the beginning of the semester,” Coach Runion noted.

The Tigers will lineup with freshman Rocio Tejedo along with a lineup of seniors Aine Donegan, Elsa Svensson and juniors Taylor Riley and Edit Hertzman. Freshman Josefin Widal will play as an individual over the par 72, 6,305-yard layout.

Tejedo, who averaged 70.80 in her first fall collegiate play, is ranked No. 17 in the national collegiate rankings and No. 34 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings.

Donegan, who averaged 72.40, is ranked 56th in the World Rankings, which is one spot off her best amateur ranking earlier this summer.

Riley is averaging 72.71 for the three events she appeared in during the fall season.

Obviously, the weather in Puerto Rico is much different than the weather the Tigers have had to face in preparing the last couple of weeks.

“My team embraced the extremely unusual weather we experienced in Baton Rouge leading up to this event and have been focused on getting their work in and being as prepared as possible,” said Coach Runion. “We are going with a new line up for the first tournament of the spring with Rocio, Aine, Elsa, Taylor and Edit. It is an older line up for us with four upper classman that have seen this course before.”

Live scoring for the event will be on Golfstat.com under the Puerto Rico Classic tab. The first round Sunday will begin at 7 a.m. CT (9 a.m. in Puerto Rico with a shotgun start). LSU will be paired with Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Northwestern off the first three holes. The 54-hole event continues through Tuesday.