Duke men's golf opens postseason play at NCAA Tempe Regional

With four regular season wins and a league title already under its belt, Duke needs to stay hot this week in the desert to keep its season alive.

The No. 7 Blue Devils will tee it up in Tempe, Ariz. Thursday through Saturday for the NCAA Tempe Regional at the par-70 ASU Karsten Golf Course. Duke, seeded behind only UCLA in the 14-team regional tournament, needs a top-five finish to earn a spot in the NCAA Championships in Atlanta later this month.

“Expectations are very high,” Duke head coach Jamie Green said. “We are tied for first at the National Championship, and that is the way we want to approach [this week].”

At the ACC Tournament last month, Green’s Blue Devils set a school record with a 25-under-par 839 that gave Duke its first ACC title since 2005. Individually, senior Adam Sumrall earned a fifth-place finish, fellow seniors Brinson Paolini and Julian Suri ended the tournament tied for seventh, and junior Austin Cody and freshman Mads Soegaard finished in a tie for 17th.

That lineup was also responsible for one of the team’s four regular season victories when it took home the Hootie at Bulls Bay Intercollegiate title in March. Green has brought the same five players to Arizona for the Regional.

“I’m not saying I would never mix up a winning lineup, but in this case we had everyone contributing,” Green said. “Everybody is playing well, and [we are] going into this week with a lot of confidence.”

 Since completing final exams shortly after the ACC Tournament, the Blue Devil squad has been somewhat scattered, with some players staying in Durham for golf and graduation, others heading home to practice or compete in regional qualifiers for the U.S. Open and a few doing a combination of the two.

While only Paolini made it through the first round of U.S. Open Qualifiers, Green noted that simply competing in the qualifiers will help prepare his team for this week.

“[Playing in a qualifier] kind of helps their planning and their preparation, and I think they are coming in here sharp,” Green said. “It’s not as if they haven’t played any competitive golf or they haven’t worked on their game—they’ve definitely stayed on top of it.”

With the exception of Cody, the team also enters this week with experience on the Karsten course that will host the Tempe Regional, as four out of the five Blue Devils competing this week played in Duke’s match against Grand Canyon University on the course in March.

While the course played as a par-72 for that match and will likely feature longer rough and quicker greens this week, Green says the familiarity with the layout will help his team score.

“It’s there for the taking,” Green said. “It’s not a golf course that is going to overwhelm you…. Other than a few shots that include some water hazards, it’s definitely a golf course that’s scorable.”

Duke’s five victories this season set a program record and will be facing three other ranked teams—No. 4 UCLA, No. 15 Georgia and No. 22 Texas A&M—in a field that features four conference champions.