The No. 8 NC State men’s golf team will travel to the Capital City Club in Atlanta for the ACC Championship Friday, April 23 through Monday, April 26.
The Wolfpack has won four consecutive tournaments and will look to extend that streak to five at the ACC Championship. In its four-tournament win streak, the Pack has been 106-under par as a team.
Winning the championship will be no easy feat as the ACC has five other teams ranked in the top 25, including No. 2 Florida State, No. 4 Clemson, No. 6 Wake Forest, No. 16 North Carolina and No. 25 Notre Dame. The conference has been dominated by Wake Forest and Georgia Tech, who have each won 18 titles.
A new format will be implemented for this year’s tournament: Friday will consist of 36 holes of stroke play, and Saturday will consist of 18 holes of stroke play. After the first two days, the top four teams will advance to the semifinals on Sunday, and the event will conclude with the championship round on Monday.
The Pack enters the tournament with four players in the Golfstat top 150: graduate Benjamin Shipp (No. 27), sophomore Maximilian Steinlechner (No. 48), senior Easton Paxton (No. 98) and graduate Christian Salzer (No. 110). Shipp was recently named ACC Co-Golfer of the Month for March.
At the most recent ACC Championship, which was in 2019 due to the 2020 championship being canceled, NC State finished sixth in the conference with a score of 8-under par. Paxton had the highest score on the team, finishing in a tie for ninth with a score of 5-under par.
The only time NC State won the championship was in 1990, when it tied with Clemson for first place. Thirty years later, the Pack will try to reach the top again.
The Pack will start on hole one Friday, April 23 with tee times ranging from 7:30-8:18 a.m. Tee times are from 9-10:48 a.m. on both Saturday, April 24 and Sunday, April 25 and from 9-9:48 for the championship on Monday, April 26. The championship will be broadcast live on ACC Network Extra, and a recap show of the tournament will be broadcast Monday night at 7 p.m. on ACC Network.
