Wake Forest Men’s Golf Wins ACC Championship

For the first time since 1989, the Wake Forest Men’s Golf Team is ACC Champions. The 15th ranked Deacs won the championship by taking down the 11th ranked Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets 3-2 in a match that went to extra holes.

For a neutral observer, this was probably just an incredibly fun match to watch. For the Wake fans, it was likely one of the more nerve-wracking, tense matches they have ever watched. The Deacs fell in a hole (that’s a golf pun) early after junior Mark Power was defeated by Georgia Tech’s Christo Lamprecht in the first match by 5 holes. Senior Parker Gillam knotted things up at 1 by taking down Tech’s Connor Howe, protecting his 1-hole lead on the 18th hole to win by 2 holes. Wake Forest freshman Scotty Keenan fell to Bartley Forrester by 4 holes, but sophomore Michael Brennan tied things back up at 2-2 after he birdied the 18th hole to defeat the Yellow Jackets’ Ross Steelman by 1 hole.

With things tied 2-2, everything came down to the final match between Wake’s Alex Fitzpatrick and Tech’s Benjamin Reuter. It would seem 18 holes were not enough to determine a winner, because the two were all square at the end of the round, meaning the ACC title would come down to sudden death extra holes. I can only imagine the amount of pressure these two must have been under in this situation. After tying on the first two holes, Fitzpatrick won the match for the Deacs with a par on the 21st hole.

The win marked Wake’s first ACC Championship in golf since 1989 and head coach Jerry Haas’s first ACC title. It was also just the fourth time in ACC history a team has swept both the ACC Men’s and Women’s Championships, with the Wake Forest Women’s team defeating Florida State for the ACC title last week. That is an impressive feat for the golf program.

Congratulations and Go Deacs!