SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When North Carolina qualified for match play and earned a spot in the top eight at last year’s NCAA Championship it earned the program’s highest finish since 1993, when the Tar Heels were third.
With four of five starters returning to this year’s championship, the second consecutive year at Grayhawk Golf Club, the expectations haven’t changed for the boys in Carolina blue.
“I mean, same as last year, right? You’ve got to try to take care of business in stroke play, play the best golf you can play, get into that top eight, and then it’s like a whole new ballgame,” said head coach Andrew DiBitetto. “You take it step-by-step, but the end goal here is to go home with a national championship.
“It’s just big time trust in our guys. I think we have a really good recipe,” he continued. “Since me and (assistant coach Matt Clark) have been together, we’ve had some success in the postseason, but we haven’t come away with any championships yet. That’s the end goal. I like where our minds are at, like where our games are at, I love the talent and the depth that we have on our team this year.”
Golfweek/Sagarin Rankings: Men’s team | Men’s individual
More: What we want to see at the 2022 NCAA Championship
DiBitetto’s teams have made it to the NCAA Championship every year since 2017, finishing inside the top 20 all four years, joining Arizona State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Vanderbilt as the only schools to accomplish the feat. Last season was the team’s first top-10 finish since tying for ninth in 2003.
“I think it does matter. I think guys have been there, done that, not just the situation, but this golf course, you have a little bit of an understanding and expectation of how to plot your way around,” said DiBitetto of Carolina’s experience advantage. “If there are things they did well last year, continue to do that, but if there are things that you need to get better at in year two, you can kind of make some subtle adjustments for each guy if they need to.”
The Tar Heels were three-time winners this season, claiming the Rod Myers Invitational, Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational and the Williams Cup in the fall before taking a step back in the spring. Carolina then won stroke play at the ACC Championship by nine strokes before falling to Wake Forest in the semifinals in match play. Despite junior Austin Greaser earning medalist honors, the Heels fell short once again to the Demon Deacons, finishing second.
New to this year’s championship lineup is freshman David Ford, who came to Chapel Hill after a stellar junior career where he reached No. 1 in both the Rolex AJGA and Golfweek junior rankings and was first-team AJGA All-America in 2020 and honorable mention in 2019.
“I think he’s gonna be just fine. He’s so level-headed, so strong mentally,” said DiBitetto. “His game is so solid, he doesn’t really have any weaknesses. He works crazy hard and he’s trying to win every single week. I think his game is built to play really well at this golf course, just because he controls his ball really well. He’s a very smart player.”
How can Carolina continue to build towards a title? One word.
“What we like to talk about this time of year is just composure. It doesn’t matter if it’s the ACC Championship or regionals, I just feel like when post season gets here, the tendency is for the wheels to start spinning faster and faster,” explained DiBitetto. “We just talk a lot about our mindset and our body language and just making sure that we are controlling things that we can control. And a lot of that, especially this week, will just be composure and patience out here.”
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