Following a turbulent stroke-play portion of the ACC Men’s Golf Championship at Shark’s Tooth Golf Club in Panama City, Fla. — that saw the Cavaliers shoot their way to a four-under finish — Virginia looked to make a push for the conference title in the match-play portion beginning Sunday.
The Cavaliers’ quarterfinal matchup presented quite a challenge to begin the road to glory, with Virginia facing off against Louisville Sunday.
Freshman Michael Lee found himself in a hole early, dropping the second hole to Louisville sophomore Warren Thomis. A subsequent eagle on the third leveled the match again, and a birdie on the fourth gave Lee a one-up lead. The beginning of the back nine proved stagnant, however, and an opportune birdie on nine left Thomis with a one-hole lead until the 12th.
Lee was able to rally with a birdie on 15, tying the match. A stalemate in the late stages of the round meant a playoff, which Lee promptly took with a birdie on the 10th hole. The Cavaliers were off to the races.
The Cavaliers made their mark on the day’s play against the Cardinals with performances from the tried-and-true duo of senior Ben James and graduate student Paul Chang. Both players thrashed their quarterfinal opponents with authority, posting results of four-and-two and six-and-four, respectively.
Senior Bryan Lee’s defeat to Louisville senior Andrew Tan and junior Josh Duangmanee’s resolute tie meant that the Cavaliers walked away from the quarterfinal round with a 3.5-1.5 victory. An imminent matchup with North Carolina was set to take place later that afternoon.
Weather played spoilsport, however, with a thunder delay delaying semifinal matchups until 4:35 p.m., leaving the Cavaliers with a brief period of sunlight to make inroads before play would resume Monday morning.
It appeared as though the prolonged wait may have amplified nerves amongst the Virginia squad, with James and Michael Lee struggling to get ahead in the early going Monday. James never looked comfortable, save for a tremendous eagle on the 524-yard, par-five sixth hole that tied the match. Carson Bertagnole, on the other hand, was lights-out. The North Carolina freshman carded a four-under, bogey-free back nine to steal the match from college golf’s premier individual talent.
Lee once again had to scratch and claw his way through 18 holes of regulation golf, grabbing an ever-so-brief lead at 13 and losing it on the 14th, to reach a playoff against graduate student Andrew Riley. His resolve went unrewarded, however, with Riley making a three on the par-four 10th hole.
Luckily for Virginia, the remaining three Cavaliers had just enough to get their squad over the line. Bryan Lee prevailed in a seesawing affair with a one-up victory, while Chang put away his opponent, sophomore Sihan Sandhu, with relative ease in the largest win of the round.
He attacked the back nine with particular vigor, making birdie on five holes to take a four-up lead with two holes to play.
With the scores level at 2-2, Virginia’s championship hopes all descended upon the shoulders of Duangmanee, who had squandered a one-hole advantage that he held throughout the entire front nine, only to recapture the lead on 17 with an eagle. North Carolina sophomore Grant Roscich made a pivotal birdie at 18 to tie the match, and a playoff was required to determine the fate of both squads.
Duangmanee wasted no time, draining a birdie putt from around 25 feet to seal the deal and advance the Cavaliers to the final match with a chance to repeat as conference champions.
A storybook ending stood just beyond the imposing Stanford squad. The Cardinal had earned the first seed for the weekend with a stroke-play winning score of -20 that quintupled Virginia’s second-place total.
Monday afternoon was marked by an uncharacteristically slow start for Stanford, however. At the nine-hole mark, the Cavaliers found themselves ahead in four of five matches, with James and Bryan Lee both carrying leads of three holes or greater into the final nine holes of the tournament.
Michael Lee dominated the first nine holes for the Cavaliers, scoring birdies on four consecutive holes to round out the front and thwarting a three-under start for freshman Edan Cui. The back nine proved more difficult, though, and Cui’s three early birdies proved too much for Lee to overcome as he came up just short with a one-hole margin of defeat.
As James and Bryan Lee shored up their decisive victories in emphatic fashion, Duangmanee’s early lead crumbled. Senior Nathan Wang scored a bogey-free two-under on the back, just enough to prevail for Stanford’s second victory.
The match didn’t reach the 18th, however, with a simultaneous death blow on 16 that rendered the result futile.
The match between Chang and his opponent, senior Dean Greyserman, was dormie as they approached the 16th green, with Chang facing a mid-range putt for birdie. After a narrow miss and marking his ball to allow his Cardinal competitor to finish up, he sank his par putt to give the Cavaliers their second-straight ACC Championship.
After suffering heartbreak just a year ago in the NCAA Championship final against Oklahoma State, the Cavaliers cemented themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the ACC. The renewed opportunity for the Cavaliers’ tested veteran core to lead Virginia to the mountaintop for the first time in program history was not lost on Coach Bowen Sargent.
“Two is better than one,” Sargent said following the victory. “Each year, they’ve just gained more experience and gotten better and their confidence has grown. Obviously, last year, we saw some of that, winning the ACC and then heading to the final match at the National Championship. Golf is a game of experience and, right now, we’ve got that in spades.”
The Cavaliers will head to a regional location, still to be determined, May 18 for their final hurdle on the way to the NCAA Championship at the Omni La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, Calif.
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