A rocky final round on Monday at the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship Tournament saw UNC finish 17-over-par for the day, but the Tar Heels still finished 15th overall for the program’s best performance at the event in 15 years.

UNC needed to finish in the top eight on Monday at the Karsten Creek Golf Club in order to advance to Tuesday’s match play portion of the tournament.

That was not meant to be, however, as the Tar Heels found themselves among a large list of teams struggling to find the hole in the final round–as they were one of eight teams to shoot at least 12-over-par for the day.

No team finished the stroke play portion of the event under par, either. Oklahoma State topped the leaderboard with a score of even par, with Duke in second place with a score of 8-over-par.

UNC wound up with a final score of 35-over-par to finish five strokes behind the two squads tied for 14th-place, Clemson and Arizona State.

“It’s a difficult and demanding course on any day, then you throw in the fact it was the final round of stroke play in a national championship, the wind kicked up, and for the first time all week the greens were pretty firm and had plenty of pace, you combine all of that and it led to some higher scores for a lot of good teams including ours,” UNC head coach Andrew DiBitetto said afterwards.

Overall, it’s the program’s 30th time finishing in the top 15 at the NCAA Championship Tournament, but first time since 2003–when it was also held at the Karsten Creek Golf Club.

“We had a heck of a year,” says DiBitetto. “Of course we are disappointed right now, but we won two tournaments, including one on the west coast, we set a number of team records, individual records and several players had career best rounds and finishes.”

For the final team leaderboard, click here.

 

 

Photo via UNC Athletics