Tech Golf Aims for ACC Championship – Men’s Golf — Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

THE FLATS – Georgia Tech’s golf team, ranked No. 25 in the nation, begins the chase for its 20^th all-time Atlantic Coast Conference championship Thursday when the 71^st ACC Men’s Golf Championship gets underway at The Club at Olde Stone in Bowling Green, Ky.

Fifteen teams will compete for the championship, which includes 54 holes of stroke play to determine eight teams that qualify for match play. Only four teams have qualified for match play each of the last five years. 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.

Pairings for the first round of stroke play are based on the most recent Scoreboard rankings. The Yellow Jackets are the No. 6 seed, paired with No. 4 Duke and No. 5 Louisville for the opening round Thursday beginning at 9:22 a.m. from the 10th tee.

Head coach Bruce Heppler’s team, which has one victory (Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational) from the fall on its resume this year, finished seventh out of 12 teams at its most recent tournament, the Ford Collegiate in Richmond Hill, Ga. The Yellow Jackets also tied for fourth place at the Watersound Invitational in Panama City Beach, Fla., for its best finish this spring. Redshirt junior Benjamin Reuter (Naarden, The Netherlands) has been the Yellow Jackets top finisher in three of the five spring events, with freshman Albert Hansson (Fiskebäckskil, Sweden) leading Tech at Pauma Valley, and sophomore Carson Kim (Yorba Linda, Calif.) doing so at the Ford Collegiate.

Hiroshi Tai (Singapore), who won the NCAA individual championship last May at LaCosta, and Reuter, who had a pair of top-10 finishes in the fall, are among five players who helped the Yellow Jackets advance to match play at the NCAA Championship each of the past two years. Also back are sophomore Kale Fontenot (Lafayette, La.) and junior Aidan Tran (Fresno, Calif.).

The tournament will utilize a split-tee start format each day of stroke play, playing 18 holes Friday, Saturday and Sunday starting at 9 a.m. Central Daylight Time (10 a.m. EDT). The top eight teams on the leaderboard 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…