Virginia Wins First ACC Championship

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – In another tightly contested match at the 2025 ACC Championship, Virginia edged North Carolina 3-2, to win its first ever ACC crown. Three of the five matches went to the 18th hole, including the final pairing in which Bryan Lee held off Maxwell Ford to clinch the victory.

Serving as the anchor for the Cavalier lineup for the second-straight day, Lee leaned on his short game to secure the 2-UP victory. After 13 holes, Lee was down by two and chipped in for birdie on 14 to begin an epic comeback. He won the eighth hole on a 25-foot birdie putt. The chip-in began a stretch where he won four of his last five holes to help UVA eventually win its first ACC title.

Senior Deven Patel led his match from the first hole and never relented to give UVA its second point of the day. With wins on the first two holes, Patel had won six-straight holes going back to Sunday’s semifinal. He went up by as many as three after nine holes and withstood a late charge by Keaton Vo. Patel won 1 UP, halving the 18^th hole with a par.

Patel won a match in the quarterfinal, had a comeback win in the semifinal and another in the final. He and North Carolina’s David Ford, the No. 1 player in the Scoreboard powered by Clippd individual rankings, were the only players in the tournament to win three matches.

Virginia secured the first point of the day by either team courtesy of Paul Chang who defeated Sihan Sandu 2&1. Chang never trailed in the match and broke a stalemate with a par on the difficult 16th and ended the match with a par on the 17th hole.

North Carolina, the No. 8 team in the country according to the Bushnell/Golfweek Coaches Poll, kept the match tight all day. At one juncture, all five matches were either tied or within one after nine holes were completed by all 10 competitors.

UP NEXT
Selections for the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships will take place on Wednesday, April 30, from 1-2 p.m. ET on the GOLF Channel.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

• Virginia wins its first ACC Championship in program history. They have previously finished runner-up five times (1958, 1996, 2010, 2012 & 2019).
• Deven Patel was the only player on UVA to win all three of his matches.
• This was UVA’s first appearance in the ACC match play final. The ACC first started using match play to determine the league champion in 2021.
• UVA is 3-1 all-time in ACC match play with its only loss coming in 2023 to Wake Forest.
• Virginia bested second-place North Carolina by eight strokes in the 54-hole stroke play competition to earn the top-seed going into match play. The two teams only played in one tournament together in the 2024-25 regular season, The Hayt in Jacksonville, Fla. hosted by the University of North Florida. The Tar Heels (-1) finished one stroke ahead of UVA (E), placing fourth.

ACC MATCH PLAY FINAL RESULTS

UVA 3, NORTH CAROLINA 2
Chang (UVA) def. Sandhu (UNC) – 2&1
Ford (UNC) def. Duangmanee (UVA) – 1 UP
Roscich (UNC) def. James (UVA) – 3&2
Patel (UVA) def. Vo (UNC) – 1 UP
Lee (UVA) vs. M. Ford (UNC) – 2 UP