FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. - Led by senior Jason Buha, the men's golf team opened the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament with high expectations. But Duke's golfers ended the windy weekend with only high scores to show for their efforts, coming in sixth place with a team total of 899.
After the first day of competition, All-ACC candidate Buha was first in the field with a two-under par 70. Troubles towards the end of the course cost him a lower score.
As a team the Blue Devils were in fourth place overall after the first 18 holes, trailing only golf superpowers Clemson, North Carolina, and Wake Forest. Those three teams had beaten the Blue Devils handily all season long, and Duke had adjusted its tournament expectations accordingly.
"It's not like we're trying to win the tournament," Duke coach Rod Myers said. "It was our own little tournament for us and our goal was to finish in the top four. If we could beat Georgia Tech, N.C. State, and Virginia, we would still be alive. Those are the teams that we really had to compete with."
However, as the wind picked up on the second day of competition, Duke was blown astray from its goals.
"The problem with the wind is that you are never quite sure which club to hit," Myers said. "The club that you hit is always going to be dependent on the trajectory of your shot. If the ball balloons up in the air and gets high, the wind will really have an effect on it."
Buha, an experienced wind player, seemed to be taking advantage of the adverse conditions as he held his lead through the first half of the course. The back nine holes became Buha's nemesis for the tournament, however, as he missed several close putts and shot 79 for the day, dropping to eighteenth in the overall standings.
"Jason Buha is usually one of the best wind players," Myers said. "For him to struggle on the backside is uncommon."
Other than bad luck, Buha could find no explanation for his play.
"I played terrible," he said. "I wasn't making any putts outside of five feet and I hit a couple of shots that weren't that bad and turned out terrible."
Other Blue Devils were also affected by the wind. Freshman Jim Donnelly, who shot his personal best 54-hole total of 216 in last weekend's Ping Intercollegiate, shot a 13-over par 85.
"We've got a couple of guys who don't feel overly comfortable in the wind," Myers said.
The wind blew the Blue Devils down to fifth place and 29-over par after Saturday, as Virginia moved ahead into fourth place. Beating the Cavaliers was one of the key goals for Duke, since both teams are vying for a spot in the NCAA East Region Tournament.
Duke improved with the weather as the winds died down and the sun came out for Sunday's championship round. The Blue Devils played well on the first nine holes and looked to be in position to finish the day's round under par as a team. But they stumbled on the back nine holes for a second time, finishing the tournament in seventh place and 36-over par.
"We needed to play at a certain level," Myers said. "We did that for about fourteen or fifteen holes but we didn't take it into the house like you'd like to."
Buha's troubles began at the fifteenth hole. His ball took a bad bounce off of a tree and ended up out of bounds leading to a double-bogey. He struggled again on the next hole, when his shot ended up in the water to force another double bogey. Junior Chris Schmid was also tripped up by the back end of the course, bogeying the last three holes.
"Bad things happened at inconvenient times," said Buha, who ended up fourteenth in the tournament for the second year in a row. "It's been really really frustrating. I haven't had anything go my way."
Bright spots in the tournament included the play of senior Erik Bertrand and freshman Mike Christensen. Both shot even-par on Sunday, and Christensen finished the individual competition tied with Buha for fourteenth place. Bertrand, in one of his final competitions as a Blue Devil, showed some of his sometimes-hidden talent. He finished in a tie for 22nd place.
"He's been coming into his own," Myers said. "We've had some high expectations for Erik and he's been a little slow getting there, so I was really pleased with his play today."
The Blue Devils finished the competition with a 54-hole total of 899, 33 strokes behind eventual champion Clemson and 16 strokes behind fourth-place Virginia.
Duke's inability to catch the Cavaliers could move the team off the bubble and out of contention for the NCAA East Regionals. The two-stroke loss to the tournament's fifth-place team, Florida State, does not affect Duke's tournament chances because the Seminoles are not a part of the East Region.
"We felt that if we could finish ahead of Virginia our chances of getting to the NCAAs were still alive," Myers said. "I don't know if we still have a chance or not, but it's certainly depleted."
Duke will have its final chance to make a case to the selection committee for NCAA East Regional qualification next weekend, when the Blue Devils travel to Spartanburg, S.C., to compete in the Wofford Invitational.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.