UNC's Austin Greaser impresses in men's golf ACC championship play

CHARLOTTE — Austin Greaser knew what he had to do. On Charlotte Country Club’s long and brutally difficult par-4 18th hole, he needed to make birdie to tie clubhouse leader Michael Brennan of Wake Forest and give himself a chance to win the ACC individual title. 

The hole measures 505 yards and is a sharp dogleg right, down the hill from the tee and then back up to a green perched in front of the clubhouse. Greaser’s drive leaked a little right into the rough. With the ball below his feet and the pin on the far right, he went for it. He had to. He kicked his leg up on the follow through and begged the ball to get close. It settled about 40 feet away on the back of the green. He had a chance.

The first part of the putt was up a slope, then it would go downhill and break right. The ball was rolling well. It was on line. But it stopped on the lip, one roll away.

“I felt like I had a good read on it, and all I can do is roll it the best I can and see if it drops or not,” Greaser said. “Close, but not this time.”

He finished one shot shy of a playoff in a tie for third, marking his second top-5 in the ACC Championship and matching his best result of the season. He posted three under-par rounds of 68, 69 and 70. Greaser now has seven top-15 finishes in 10 starts and leads the Tar Heels in scoring average this season. The graduate student and three-time All-American ranks 13th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and fifth in the PGA TOUR University standings.

Second top-5 finish in an ACC Championship for Austin Greaser, who ties for 3rd, just a single stroke off the lead. Also fifth in 2021. Played in all three seasons when UNC finished first in stroke play. pic.twitter.com/PJbHtca0hB

— UNC Men's Golf (@UNCmensGolf) April 21, 2024

Cold temperatures and relentless wind and rain for Sunday’s final round provided a stern test, a test Greaser embraced.

“I played really solid,” he said. “I really like tough conditions. I think it separates the greats from the goods. I think the cream rises to the top on days like today.”

Greaser’s 1-under 70 was the second best score of the day and more than four strokes better than the field average. It was a grind.

He was bogey free and 1-under-par before he found trouble on the 10th. His tee shot went way right on the dogleg-left par-4 and nestled in thick native grass. After struggling to find the golf ball, he pitched out back into the fairway but was unable to get up and down from there for par. When his third shot came up short of the green, Greaser was visibly frustrated.

But he kept grinding. He played the par-5 12th to perfection, hitting the fairway, laying up to an ideal spot and spinning a wedge to a couple feet to set up birdie.

“If you can have a good attitude about [the conditions] and convince yourself that you’re prepared for it, I think that really, really makes a difference,” Greaser said. “And I feel like I did a good job of that today.”

On 14, he played another stellar wedge shot to a difficult back left hole location to set up another birdie, this one tying him for the lead. 

A failed up and down on 16, however, led to a bogey. After a two-putt par on the par-3 17th, it all came down to the last. 

He was centimeters away.

While he was agonizingly close, yet agonizingly far, from winning an ACC individual title on Sunday, Greaser feels his game is peaking at the right time as he enters the final weeks of his UNC career. He could have turned professional last summer, but he decided to come back. 

“You only get to do this college golf thing once,” he said back in January. “I felt there was some unfinished business.”

North Carolina lost to Georgia Tech in the semifinals of the 2023 NCAA championship, the program’s best finish since 1993. A year later, as he battles thoughts about the end versus staying in the present, Greaser is ready to go out on a high note.

“It’s been the best five years of my life, wouldn’t change a thing,” he said. “I think that’s freed me up to love every second of it here at the end and give it everything I’ve got and play as well as I can.”

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