Mercer finishes third at David Toms Intercollegiate

BATON ROUGE, La. – Mercer sophomore Emmanuel Kountakis fired a 6-under 66 in the final round of the David Toms Intercollegiate, leading the men’s golf team into third-place finish.

Kountakis carded the lowest score of any player on Sunday to move out of a tie for 12th and into second place overall with an 1-over 217 for the tournament. The top-10 finish is Kountakis’ second straight after finishing seventh at last week’s Inverness Intercollegiate.

As a team, Mercer posted a score of 286 on the final round of action, as all five players tallied their best rounds of the tournament to help the team to its best 18 holes this fall. The Bears moved past Winthrop into third place at the event, which featured seven Golfweek.com Top 100 programs. Host LSU claimed the team crown with a score of 891, while Southeastern Louisiana finished two strokes behind in second place.

Freshman Jerry Ren used 73 strokes on Sunday to capture his first top-10 finish (eighth overall) with a 54-hole total of 224. Senior Trey Rule had his best round of the weekend, carding a 71 en route to a tournament total of 225 and a 10th-place finish. Sean Smothers finished with a score of 236 thanks to Sunday’s 76, while Jeffrey Heinicka Jr. fired a 79 on the final day for a three-round score of 244.

The Bears will return to action on Oct. 13-14, when they compete in the Autotrader.com Collegiate Classic hosted by Georgia State at Berkeley Hills Country Club in Duluth, Ga.