This Week In Rattlers Golf
2026 Rattler Invitational
Feb. 16-17 • San Antonio (Dominion Country Club)
•   The St. Mary's Men's Golf team will host the 18th edition of the Rattler Invitational at the Dominion Country Club. The Rattlers have hosted the tournament 28 times, but it has been held at several different courses in San Antonio and under different names.
•   St. Mary's kicked off the spring season the way they ended the fall, with a tournament victory. The Rattlers won the Spring Kickoff Intercollegiate, hosted by Lincoln Memorial in St. Augustine, Fla. The Rattlers had four finish in the top 10, including Baptiste Touchard, who won his first tournament of the year with a 215.
•   Senior Baptiste Touchard was named the Lone Star Men's Golfer of the Week after his victory in Florida. It is his first award of the season, but the fourth for the team, as Kongpop Kaikaew has won twice and Guillaume Paquette once.
•   The Rattlers are the defending Rattler Invitational champions, winning the 2025 title with a three-round total of 855. Bryce Womack from Midland won the individual title with a 209. St. Mary's has won the tournament six times and Emilio Gonzalez won medalist honors for the Rattlers in both 2018 and 2019.
•   St. Mary's jumped four spots to ninth in the GCAA Coaches Poll on Oct. 31 in the final poll of the fall. The Rattlers have been ranked in the top 25 in eight straight polls, the second-longest streak in school history behind the 20 straight from 2018-2020.
•   Sophomore Elijah Galvan had the highest finish of his career, tying for fourth place at the Spring Kickoff Intercollegiate. Galvan shot a 217 (+1) and turned in two rounds of 72.Â
•   The lineup for the Rattler Invitational will be 1) Baptiste Touchard, 2) Kongpop Kaikaew, 3) Guillaume Paquette, 4) Elijah Galvan, and 5) Philip Hallstrom. Both Zach Seader and Connor Smith will be competing as individuals.
•   The field for the tournament will consist of teams from #6 St. Mary's (host), #11 DBU, #17 UT Permian Basin, #32 Midwestern State, #44 UT Tyler, Arkansas-Monticello, Cameron, Lubbock Christian, Missouri Southern State, Northeastern State, Northwestern Oklahoma State, Pittsburg State, Southern Wesleyan, Texas A&M International, UT Dallas, and Western New Mexico.
•   The Rattlers will be paired with golfers from DBU and UTPB during the first two rounds, which starts at 8:15 a.m. in a shotgun start. The teams will begin on holes 1-3.
•   The weather forecast for San Antonio is mostly sunny skies with highs in the high 70s with winds between 7-12 mph.
•   The 264 shot by the Rattlers in the second round of the Skip Wagnon Invitational breaks the school single-round record by four strokes, while the 806 shatters the 54-hole tournament record of 833 from the 2004 team at the St. Edward's Invitational. Kongpop Kaikaew's 197 also establishes a new 54-hole individual record, bettering his own record of 198 from last year at the Ryan Palmer Foundation Invitational.
•   One of the strengths of the Rattlers is that any tournament, anyone can step up to be a leader. Kongpop Kaikaew and Baptiste Touchard have led the team six times, while Philip Hallstrom and has been the low scorer five times, and Guillaume Paquette has done so four times in their StMU careers.
