Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.

For the University of National Champions, a men’s golf crown would be awesome.

The Tar Heels are having their best NCAA tournament performance in history by finishing first in four rounds of stroke play and enter match play today as the No. 1 seed against 8th-seed Arizona State at the 2023 NCAA Men’s Golf Championship on the Grayhawk Golf Course in Scottsdale, Arizona.

They are favored to win their first national championship in a sport that has struggled since the days of Davis Love III and John Inman in the 1980s and Harvie Ward 30 years before that.

Carolina may have its most talented team ever, with five players ranked in the top 50 individually, and pulling off the title in match play would be a special championship for a school that has won dozens of Natties in other sports.

All-American senior Austin Greaser made a hole-in-one and fired a 4-under-par 66, one of three Tar Heels to shoot in the 60s in the final round to lead UNC to a first-place finish in the team standings after 72 holes of stroke play. Greaser aced the par-3 fifth hole. David Ford shot 68 and Ryan Burnett 69 as Carolina shot 7-under-par 273 Monday, which equaled the best round of the day by Florida State. It was the second straight day UNC had its lowest round ever in an NCAA Championship (including 275 Sunday in the third round).

The Tar Heels shot 12 under over the final 36 holes to earn the top seed in match play after entering the tournament as the No. 2 seed and are the highest-seeded team remaining for match play.

Sixth-year head Coach Andrew DiBitetto said, “We love our guys for a lot of reasons… one of them – no matter what they do, wherever they are on the leaderboard, they’re always hungry, they always want more, they want to keep working. They want to be the absolute best versions of themselves. We just had a successful four rounds and we finished atop the leaderboard. But our guys are still hungry. They went right to the range and they’re still there working, and we have a lot more work to do this week.”

Bring home another Natty, coach.

 

Photo via Andy Mead.

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