Burnett A Mainstay In Men’s Golf’s Growth As National Force

After 72 holes over four days at the Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., four of the best collegiate players in the country were tied for the lead for the individual title at the 2022 NCAA Men’s Golf Championships.
 
The University of North Carolina’s five-man lineup included a freshman who was the nation’s No. 1 junior; a first-team All-America from the previous season; a 2021 U.S. Amateur finalist; and a fifth-year senior who would soon be playing on the PGA Tour.
 
Yet there was Ryan Burnett, the senior from Lafayette, Calif., whose career at UNC had seen both ends of the competitive spectrum, tied for the lead and playing for a national championship.
 
Vanderbilt freshman Gordon Sargent, who soon became the No. 1-ranked amateur in the world, won the playoff and the NCAA title with a birdie on the first extra hole. For Burnett, the second-place finish was the best by a Tar Heel in the national championship since John Inman won in 1984.
 
Burnett’s journey in collegiate golf had been a roller coaster ride with numerous highs and lows. In his first two seasons with the Tar Heels, he was one of the best players on the team. As a freshman in 2018-19 he shot 67-63 over the final 36 holes to tie for second at the NCAA Stanford Regional and he made the 54-hole cut at the NCAA Championship; the following season, he set the school record for single-season scoring at 70.21 and earned second-team All-America honors from Golfweek.
 
In the first event of his sophomore season, the Turning Stone Tiger Invitational in Verona, N.Y., Burnett won for the first time as a Tar Heel and posted the second-best 54-hole score in UNC history with an 18-under 198. In eight tournaments that season, which ended prematurely due to the pandemic, he collected a victory, two runner-ups and a third-place finish.
 
On Tuesday, March 10, 2020, two days before much of the sports world shut its doors, Burnett had an opportunity to capture his second victory of the season and was tied for the lead heading into the final hole of the General Hackler Championship in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
 
“I took dead aim at a front pin with water short of the hole,” says Burnett. “I hit it and it caught some wind, landed on the bank and rolled back in the water to lose. We didn’t know Covid was going to cancel the rest of the season and that was my last tournament for…