Jackets in 7th Place at ACC Golf Championship – Men’s Golf — Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

Bowling Green, Ky. – Reigning NCAA Champion Hiroshi Tai (Singapore) led the way with a 1-under-par Thursday, while No. 25 Georgia Tech began its chase for a 20^th all-time Atlantic Coast Conference championship with a 2-over-par score of 290 at The Club at Olde Stone.

Tai, who is tied for 15^th place individually, was the only player under par for the No. 6 seed Yellow Jackets, who sit 12 strokes behind 12^th-ranked Virginia, the No. 3 seed, after the first round. Tai is four strokes back of the individual lead, held by the Cavaliers’ Bryan Lee.

Round 2 begins at 8 a.m. Central Daylight Time Friday, and the Jackets will tee off at 8:55 a.m. paired with top seed Florida State and ninth-seeded Stanford, each of who posted 3-over-par scores of 291 Thursday, tied for eighth place.

Fifteen teams are competing for the championship, which includes 54 holes of stroke play to determine eight teams that qualify for match play. Ten teams are ranked among the top 50 in the Scoreboard NCAA Rankings, with six of those, including the Yellow Jackets, ranked among the top 25.

The Club at Olde Stone (par 72, 7,331 yards) is hosting the championship for the first time, and this is the first time the championship has been held in the state of Kentucky. The top eight teams on the leaderboard after 54 holes qualify for match play, with quarterfinal and semifinal matches taking place Sunday starting at 7:30 p.m. CDT. The semifinal winners square off in the championship match at 10 a.m. CDT Monday.

Defending NCAA champ Hiroshi Tai led the Jackets Thursday with a 71. (photo by Andy Mead/YCJ)

TECH LINEUP – Tai played a steady round Thursday, playing the back nine (Tech’s opening nine) even with two birdies and two bogeys, and the junior from Singapore went bogey-free with one birdie on the front.

Redshirt junior Benjamin Reuter (Naarden, The Netherlands), Tech’s highest ranked player this year, played The Club at Olde Stone even par, getting there by going 2-under-par on his final eight holes, and is tied for 25^th place individually.

Sophomore Carson Kim (Yorba Linda, Calif.) shot 73 (+1) for the Jackets, and freshman Albert Hansson (Fiskebäckskil, Sweden) delivered a 74 (+2).

LEADERBOARD SUMMARY – With two players among the top three individually and three subpar scores Thursday, Virginia posted a 10-under-par 278 to lead by three over No. 5 seed and 24^th-ranked Louisville (281, -7).

No. 2 seed and 10^th-ranked North Carolina is in third place at 283 (-5), followed by…