University of North Carolina senior Austin Greaser (Vandalia, Ohio) is one of three players selected to represent the USA in the 2022 World Amateur Team Championship, to be played Aug. 31-Sept. 3 at Le Golf National near Paris, France.
2022 NCAA champion Gordon Sargent of Vanderbilt and Michael Thorbjornsen of Stanford will team with Greaser.
The World Amateur Team Championships are conducted by the International Golf Federation (IGF). The IGF also conducts the golf competitions in the Olympic Games and Youth Olympic Games.
Diana Murphy, past USGA president, will serve as captain of the USA Team.
Greaser, a two-time All-America and All-ACC honoree at Carolina, was runner-up in the 2021 U.S. Amateur and won the 2022 Western Amateur earlier this month. He won two college tournaments last season – the Olympia Fields Fighting Illini Invitational and the NCAA Yale Regional – and led UNC to a fifth-place finish in the NCAA Championship.
As a result of his second-place finish at the 2021 U.S. Amateur he earned invitations to the 2022 Masters and U.S. Open. He was one of four amateurs to make cut in the U.S. Open and tied for the low score by amateurs in the Masters. He is currently ranked No. 5 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings.
Sargent is No. 4 in the WAGR. He was the National Freshman of the Year and a first-team All-America in 2022.
Thorbjornsen finished fourth at the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship this summer. The No. 6 player in the WAGR won the 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur Championship.
Sargent received an automatic selection to the USA team due to his WAGR. The selections of Greaser and Thorbjornsen were decided by the USGA’s International Team Selection Committee.
The World Amateur Team Championship was founded in 1958, and the Women’s World Amateur Team Championship began in 1964. The IGF was founded in 1958 to encourage the international development of golf through friendship and sportsmanship. Today, the IGF consists of 151 national governing bodies of golf representing 146 countries and is the international federation for golf for the International Olympic Committee.
The women’s WATC is Aug. 24-27. Two Tar Heels are in the field with senior Krista Junkkari playing for Team Finland and Vilde Nystrøm representing Team Norway.
The championship was last played in 2018 in the Republic of Ireland, with the team from Denmark capturing the Eisenhower Trophy by one stroke over the United States.