A national championship contender resides in Chapel Hill. And they still haven’t played a single event at home.
Finley Golf Course may be under renovation, but the UNC men’s golf team’s season is all coming together at the right time. Carolina has won its last two tournaments and five total on the season, a single-season record under sixth-year head coach Andrew DiBitetto. DiBitetto is the reigning ACC Coach of the Year and looks like a strong candidate to win that crown again this year. His Tar Heels are looking to advance to another NCAA championship, which pits the best programs in the country against each other in a combination of stroke play and match play formats.
But it wasn’t always this way. As recently as 10 years ago, Carolina wasn’t a player in the collegiate golf scene. Take it from current PGA golfer Ben Griffin, who arrived as a freshman in Chapel Hill in 2014.
“Before I got there, we really weren’t good at all,” Griffin told Chapelboro. “Being the University of North Carolina, you expect every sport to be pretty much in the Top 10… almost every year. And golf was way behind.”
As Griffin and teammate Will Register progressed, the program did as well. Their senior seasons coincided with DiBitetto’s promotion from assistant coach to head coach, and the new head man told Chapelboro he had a definitive outlook for the program from Day One.
“It was a very crystal clear vision of what I thought the program could do,” DiBitetto said, “the belief in the University of North Carolina, and the fact that I saw a path to having a really successful men’s golf program.”
Still, despite DiBitetto’s optimism, skeptics around the country questioned whether Carolina could truly become a national contender. When UNC fifth-year senior Ryan Burnett was being recruited out of high school, opposing coaches minced no words when discussing their opinions of DiBitetto’s rebuilding effort.
“I was told, ‘Don’t go to Carolina. That’s where talent goes to die,’” Burnett told Chapelboro. “But I think when Coach DiBitetto got here, the culture changed. He’s really helped move it forward.”
UNC fifth-year senior Ryan Burnett (Image via UNC Athletic Communications)
DiBitetto’s vision has now become reality, as the Tar Heels are ranked as the No. 2 team in the country by Golfweek. With Finley currently unplayable, Carolina’s so-far historic season has taken it from the beaches of Florida to the desert of Nevada to the windswept fairways of Hawai’i (so windswept, in fact, that the tournament there had to be cancelled) and everywhere in between. Carolina will begin its final event of the regular season Friday in Arizona, with the ACC and NCAA championships soon to follow.
Those events will serve as a showcase for UNC’s rock-solid five-man starting lineup of Burnett, junior Peter Fountain, sophomore David Ford, senior Austin Greaser and Pepperdine transfer Dylan Menante. The experience of that quintet speaks for itself: Greaser has played in both The Masters and the U.S. Open as an amateur, while Menante won the 2021 NCAA title with the Waves.
Ford and Greaser are each inside the Top 10 of Golfweek’s individual collegiate rankings. Burnett is ranked 17th, but according to him, not many of the current Tar Heels were considered the golf equivalent of a five-star recruit.
“When I committed to Carolina, I was a good player, but nothing special,” Burnett said. “We have a lot of guys with chips on our shoulders who feel like we still have a lot to prove and that we don’t probably get the respect that some of the other top programs that have been around for 10, 20 years get. So we’re definitely a hungry bunch.”
Those perceived slights have fueled a competitive fire in the team that hasn’t been lost on DiBitetto.
“They just have this relentless pursuit to be the best that they can,” he said. “And when you have guys of that makeup and that character that are willing to put in all that work out here on the practice facility and willing to put in the work in the gym and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be great, all of a sudden you’re on a path to development, improvement, and have a chance to be great.”
Now, the Tar Heels are well-positioned to win the team’s first ACC championship since 2006, and then take home an even bigger prize: the first national championship in program history. This year’s NCAA Championship will be played at Grayhawk Golf Course in Scottsdale, AZ, the same place where Carolina tied for first in stroke play but fell in the match play quarterfinals in last year’s championship.
“I think we all have a bad taste in our mouth from how it ended last year,” said Burnett, who lost his match on a 19th hole tiebreaker.
Carolina features four of the five starters from last year’s team, with the fifth being the very same golfer who broke Burnett’s heart on that 19th hole: Menante. It’s a lineup more than capable of bringing the Tar Heels into the thick of a title race once again. And if that happens, DiBitetto is confident his team can rewrite history.
“We talk about it all the time: pressure is a privilege,” he said. “It’s right where we want to be. When you have those butterflies in your stomach and you’re nervous and maybe your hands are a little bit twitchy, we try to take a step back and smile. Because we know we are exactly where we want to be.”
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications
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