Men's Golf in Georgia for ACC Championship

The 2021 Atlantic Coast Conference Men's Golf Championship begins Friday, April 23, at the Capital City Club's Crabapple Course in Milton, Ga.

This is the first time the ACC Championship is being played at the Crabapple Course, the second time the tournament is being played in Georgia (1997) and just the eighth time since 1954 the conference is crowning its champion outside the state of North Carolina.

Carolina is coming off a tie for sixth place in Phoenix last weekend at the Arizona State Thunderbird Collegiate Invitational. The Tar Heels shot 22-under 830 to finish 12 strokes behind team champion TCU, eight behind host Arizona State and seven behind third-ranked Oklahoma State.

Three Tar Heels finished in the top 25, including fifth-year senior Austin Hitt (22nd at 5-under 208), freshman Peter Fountain and sophomore Austin Greaser (who both tied for 23rd at 4-under 209).

"Our trip and tournament in Arizona was very valuable and productive," says UNC head coach Andrew DiBitetto. "We learned a lot, all which should work to our benefit at nationals next month."

Carolina has averaged just over a third-place finish in its six tournaments this season with a win at home in the Tar Heel Intercollegiate, a co-championship at The Prestige in La Quinta, Calif., second at the Wake Forest Invitational at Pinehurst No. 2, fourth at the General Hackler, fifth at Camp Creek against an All-ACC field back in January and sixth on April 16-17 in the Arizona desert.

The Tar Heels are 11th in Golfweek's current rankings and are ranked 17th by Golftstat. Carolina enters ACC play as the No. 5 seed and will tee off Friday with No. 4 seed NC State and No. 6 Notre Dame beginning at 7:30 a.m. on the first hole.

Teams are scheduled to play 36 holes of stroke play on Friday and another round on Saturday to determine the individual ACC champion and the four teams that will advance to match play. The semifinals are Sunday with the championship match on Monday, April 26.

"After a couple days at home, we are excited to compete in Georgia in the ACC Championship," says DiBitetto. "All teams love playing in their conference championship, but we get really excited about ours due to the quality of the ACC. Our league is loaded with some of the best teams in the country.

"It's been a long time since this championship hasn't been played in North Carolina or at the Old North Club, but we are looking forward to our new four-course rotation. Crabapple is located just outside Atlanta and will be a great venue, one that hosted a national championship eight years ago. The forecast this week has a little bit of everything – cold temperatures, warm temperatures, wind, sun and rain. One of the things we will need to do well is adjust to changing conditions."

The complete list of team seeds for the ACC Championship includes: Florida State (1), Clemson (2), Wake Forest (3), NC State (4), UNC (5), Notre Dame (6), Louisville (7), Georgia Tech (8), Virginia (9), Duke (10), Virginia Tech (11) and Boston College (12).

The Tar Heels are second in the ACC in team stroke average per round. Clemson leads the ACC at 280.4 with UNC second at 282.8

Golfweek ranks three Tar Heels in the top 100 in the nation, including Fountain 11th, Greaser 69th and Hitt 90th. Fountain is Golfweek's fourth-highest ranked ACC player behind Florida State's John Pak (1), Clemson's Jacob Bridgeman (4) and Wake Forest's Alex Fitzpatrick (5).

Fountain leads Carolina in stroke average at 69.78 and score to par at 28 under through six tournaments. His stroke average is on pace to set the UNC single-season record, which currently is 71.06 by Ben Griffin as a freshman in 2014-15. The freshman from Raleigh is second in the ACC in stroke average, just 0.45 behind Bridgeman.

Carolina's lineup for the ACC Championship is the same for the second tournament in a row with Fountain, Greaser, Hitt, senior Ryan Gerard and junior Ryan Burnett.

Greaser averages 71.06 strokes, which matches Griffin's mark from 2015, and Hitt is averaging 71.27, which would equal the fifth best in school history. The sophomore from Vandalia, Ohio, is tied for ninth in the ACC in stroke average.

Burnett and Gerard continue to rank one-two in UNC history in career stroke average, with Burnett at 71.57 and Gerard at 72.00. Hitt came into the spring sixth on the UNC career list, but has played his way up to fourth all-time at 72.20.

Three of Carolina's starters have previous experience of playing in an ACC Championship.

Hitt played in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 tournaments (last season's was canceled due to the pandemic) with a top finish of 18th in 2019; Gerard has played in two previous championships, shooting a second-round 67 en route to a tie for 14th in 2019; and Burnett tied for 38th as a freshman in 2019.

Carolina has won ACC titles in 1956, 1960, 1965, 1977, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1995, 1996 and 2006.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Ryan Burnett

Peter Fountain

Austin Greaser

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