UNC Comeback Falls Short, Finishes ACC Championship Fourth

Saturday, April 15

at Pawleys Island, S.C.

All Day

North Carolina

ACC Championship

April 16, 2017 | Women's Golf

By: UNC Athletic Communications

Pawleys Island, S.C. – The Carolina women's golf team's comeback effort fell short on Saturday as the team finished the ACC Championship in fourth place with a team score of 12-over par. Today, the team shot a 9-over par 297 in tough conditions, no teams in the field shot an under-par round.

The Tar Heels came into the day in a tie for second place, nine shots behind Duke. After a rough first three holes that featured five bogeys and only one birdie, Carolina awoke on the par-5 fourth hole. There, Brynn Walker, Lexi Harkins, Leslie Cloots, and Bryana Nguyen all made birdies right after the other and a Tar Heel charge was on.

By the end of the front nine, Carolina was tied with Florida State at 3-over par and were two back of Duke, but the Tar Heels never got closer.

“Not the round that we wanted,” said head coach Jan Mann. “I think we could have certainly done better, we had a couple playing very well, all of them fighting, but a couple struggled. We need at least four good scores, it hurt us today. But, I'm seeing progress for this team.”

The Tar Heels were led by strong days from the senior Cloots and the junior Nguyen. Cloots shot a 71 to finish tied for fourth while Nguyen shot a 72 to finish tied for eighth. Cloots became the first Tar Heel to record back-to-back top five ACC Tournament individual finishes since Meghan Francella in 2003-2004.

On Saturday, Walker finished her first ACC Championship with a 75 and wound up 27^th. Harkins shot a 79 to finish tied for 31^st. Kelly Whaley shot 80 and finished 48^th.

Duke took home the ACC tournament team title with a winning score of 5-under par. They beat second place Florida State by nine strokes.

The individual title was won by Leona Maguire of Duke at 6-under par, her second in three years. She won by two shots over Jennifer Kupcho of Wake Forest.

The tournament was played at The Reserve Golf Club, a par-72, 6,192 yard test.

Under Mann, has never finished worse than fifth at the ACC Championship.

Next up for the team is to wait and see whether they have received a NCAA bid and what regional location they are assigned to. This year, regionals are being held in Albuquerque, N.M., Athens, Ga., Columbus, Ohio, Lubbock, Texas..

Mann is hopeful that the team will be selected, “We're always happy to make regionals, obviously. Georgia would be nice in that it's the closest and I'm very familiar with the golf course. As a matter of fact, Leah (Associate Head Coach Leah Buchmann) won a collegiate event there, so she likes the golf course. But, we're happy to go anywhere.”

For Carolina, there are lessons learned as they turn their attention to NCAA play. Coach Mann said she thinks the team needs to focus on, “Just trusting in themselves a bit more and not getting frustrated, we saw that out there some. We always preach that, but it's hard sometimes when things aren't going quite the way you want them to. I'd like to think that over the next several weeks we can work on that. Technically, we also have things we can improve on.”