Bulldogs Head South To Tee-Off The 2012-13 Season
Hattiesburg, Miss. - All-SEC second-team member Chad Ramey and the rest of the Mississippi State men's golf team will take their clubs south Monday to tee-off the 2012-2013 season at the 10th annual Sam Hall Intercollegiate, hosted by in-state foe Southern Mississippi.
"I am really looking forward to starting the season this week," Coach Clay Homan said, who is entering his tenth season at the helm, "our team has a lot of talent. We have some upperclassmen leadership that should go a long way contributing to our success."
The par-71, 6,882-yard golf course at the Hattiesburg Country Club will see 15 teams take to the tees at 8:30 a.m. Monday for two rounds of shotgun format golf. State will look to its wealth of experience in the likely five-man rotation composed of four juniors and one senior (Axel Boasson, Barrett Edens, Ramey, Joe Sakulpolphaisan, Robi Calvesbert).
Ramey carded the eighth-best round ever for a MSU golfer, when he turned in a 65 for the Sam Hall Collegiate just a year ago. The Bulldogs as a team competed well at the Hattiesburg Country Club in 2011, finishing tied for sixth and turning in the ninth-lowest 54-hole score in school history (850) with two current State players on the rotation (Ramey, Boasson).
"All of our starting line-up has played this course before," Coach Homan said. "That is something you want- familiarity with the golf course. I'm just looking forward to getting the season started on a positive note, because we have a very challenging schedule this year."
New to the Maroon and White faithful is incoming No.1 ranked JUCO player Sakulpolphaisan, the Thailand product comes to MSU by the way of Darton College (GA). Sakulpolphaisan was the headliner of Coach Homan's 2012 signing class and is sure to provide the Bulldogs with another talented club to the experienced State golf line-up.
"I think he'll help us," Ramey said of the incoming Sakulpolphaisan. "I played with Joe a lot this summer and we went back and forth as to who won, so I expect a lot out of him," Ramey said.
Another Bulldog ready to make his debut with the Maroon and White will be true freshman Haraldur Magnus. The 2012 Icelandic National Champion also anchored the strong 2012 signing class; Magnus will compete at the Sam Hall event as an individual.
For the third and final round on Tuesday, the golf format will be done by tee times instead of the shotgun format for the first 36-holes.
The tournament field will include teams from all over the south including: Arkansas-Little Rock, Arkansas State, Louisiana Tech, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe, McNeese State, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Rice, Sam Houston State, Samford, South Alabama, Southern Miss, Southeastern Louisiana and UT-San Antonio.
Live stats will be available through golfstat.com. Fans can follow Mississippi State Golf on Twitter at twitter.com/mstateMG and on Facebook at facebook.com/mstateMG.
