Virginia Golf Finishes 18th at NCAA Championship

The Virginia men’s golf team wrapped up an historic season over the weekend, finishing 18^th in the NCAA tournament championship. After three rounds of play, the Cavaliers finished with a score of 893 (29 over par) at the Concessions Course in Bradenton, Florida. Thirty teams competed in the event, and the top fifteen moved on after to a fourth round on Monday. Virginia missed a playoff for 15^th place by only three strokes.

Virginia came into the third round tied for 14^th and sitting on the cut line. The Cavaliers put themselves into position to advance after an especially strong performance in Saturday’s second round. Virginia came out of the gate hot during the first 9 holes Saturday, climbing as high as 8th on the leaderboard before an afternoon pullback on the second nine. The Hoos shot an 11-over 299 on Sunday to just miss the cut.

Senior Denny McCarthy paced Virginia with a 2-over performance in the first three rounds. McCarthy's strong play allowed him to advance as an individual to Monday’s fourth round, where he went 3-over. McCarthy finished 29th as an individual, wrapping up one of the most-storied careers in Virginia men’s golfing history in the process. The senior from Maryland finished 6^th nationally in 2014, the best-ever for a Cavalier on the national stage.

At the program level, Virginia’s 18^th-place finish represents its third-best since 1947. The Cavaliers have now made the NCAA tournament seven straight years, and have advanced to the tournament finals five times since 2008. Three of the five players who competed for UVA in the NCAA finals players have eligibility to return in the fall: rising senior Kyle Kochevar, rising junior Derek Bard, and rising junior Jimmy Stanger. Current senior Ji Soo Park, who played in four NCAA tournaments as a Cavalier, exhausted eligibility alongside McCarthy.

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