Men's Golf Top Seed At ACC Championship

North Carolina is the No. 1 seed in the 2022 ACC Men's Golf Championship that will be contested Friday through Monday, April 22-25, at Shark's Tooth Golf Course at the Watersound Club in Panama City Beach, Fla.

The teams will play 36 holes on Friday and a third round of stroke play Saturday to determine the four teams which will advance to match play Sunday and Monday to determine the champion.

Sunday's semifinals and Monday's championship match will be televised on ACC Network Extra beginning at 9 a.m.

The Tar Heels are one of six ACC teams ranked in Golfstat's top 25. UNC is fifth and is followed by No. 11 Georgia Tech, No. 13 Notre Dame, No. 17 Wake Forest, No. 23 Clemson and No. 24 Florida State.

Carolina's lineup for the ACC Championship includes fifth-year senior Ryan Gerard (Raleigh, N.C.), freshman David Ford (Peachtree Corners, Ga,.), junior Austin Greaser (Vandalia, Ohio), senior Ryan Burnett (Lafayette, Calif.) and sophomore Peter Fountain (Raleigh, N.C.).

Gerard leads Carolina and is fourth in the ACC in scoring average this season at 70.59 and leads the Tar Heels in score to par at 26 under over 27 rounds. He won his first college title in the fall at Duke and is third in school history in scoring at 71.78.

Ford is second in scoring average among ACC freshman at 70.78 and is second on the team in total score to par at 21 under. He was second at the Williams Cup at Eagle Point, has four top-10 finishes and finished under par in five of the last six tournaments.

Greaser is Carolina's all-time stroke average leader (71.43) and is coming off an appearance in the Masters, his first professional tournament, where he shot 74-77 to tie the lowest score by any of the six amateurs at Augusta. He also won his first collegiate title in the fall, notably holing out from the fairway on the 54th hole to win the Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational by two strokes.

Burnett, No. 2 all-time at UNC in stroke average (71.65), has a tie for 16th (at Linger Longer) and tie for 10th (at Valspar) in his last three starts. He matched his season-low rounds with a pair of 67s at Valspar.

Fountain is the defending ACC champion and enters the conference championship coming off his best tournament of the spring, a tie for 22nd at the ASU Thunderbird. He had three top-12 performances in four fall events, but finished under par in Phoenix, closing with a season-best 69, for the first time in four starts.

Last year, the Tar Heels won the stroke play portion of the ACC Championship, setting a school record and an ACC Championship record with a 26-under-par 814 at the Capital City Club's Crabapple Course in Milton, Ga. UNC's 814 strokes were the fewest in any tournament in school history and the fewest by any school in a three-round ACC Tournament.

In the match play semifinals, which began immediately after the conclusion of stroke play, Florida State, the No. 2-ranked men's golf team in the nation, defeated Carolina, 4-1. The Tar Heels had defeated the Seminoles by 31 shots in the three rounds of stroke play.

Fountain won the ACC individual title at 10-under-par 200. He became the first Tar Heel to win the title since 2003, the first UNC freshman to ever win the ACC title and the 10th freshman in league history to do so.

Greaser, who tied for fifth place in stroke play, delivered Carolina its one point in the semifinals, defeating No. 1-ranked John Pak, 4&3. Greaser jumped out to an early lead, winning the first two holes and added another win at the seventh to lead by three. He finished off the top-ranked Seminole with wins on the 14th and 15th holes.

The Tar Heels shot 26-under-par 814 for the three rounds of stroke play, 15 strokes ahead of Clemson (829). NC State was third (831) and Florida State fourth (845). Carolina's 814 total was the lowest 54-hole score in UNC men's golf history.

Fountain tied the record for fewest strokes in an ACC Championship, shooting 71-63-66 for a 10-under-par total of 200. He also tied the ACC Championship's 18-hole record with a second-round 63.

Carolina's 265 in the second round (63 by Fountain, 66 by Austin Hitt, 67 by Burnett and 69 by Greaser) broke UNC's all-time 18-hole record for team score. It also beat the previous low score in any ACC Championship round, which was 267 by Georgia Tech in the 2006 second round.

Burnett (66-67-73) and Greaser (69-69-68) tied for fifth at 4-under 206. Hitt and Greaser joined Ben Griffin (2018) as the only Tar Heels to shoot in the 60s all three rounds in an ACC Championship.

Carolina has won the ACC championship 11 times in 1956, 1960, 1965, 1977, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1995, 1996 and 2006.

Fountain was the 14th Tar Heel to win the individual title.

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Players Mentioned

Ryan Burnett

David Ford

Peter Fountain

Ryan Gerard

Austin Greaser

Austin Hitt