Sandy Choi finished the 2013 season with two top-10 performances and helped the Blue Devils claim their sixth NCAA championship, but the Duke sophomore made a statement about the future Tuesday as she made eagle late and birdied two of her final three holes to capture her first individual title.
The Choi-led Blue Devils rallied to a third-place finish Tuesday at the Cougar Classic in Charleston, S.C. Correcting for a shaky first round, Duke shot a combined six-under-par on the final day to break into the top three and finish eight-under-par.
Arkansas took home the team victory, finishing solidly ahead at 18-under. UCLA took second with 11-under-par, and Virgina and Mississippi State rounded out the top five, both finishing at three-under-par. But Choi stole the show, battling rain delays and illness en route to the individual win.
“I never thought about winning,” Choi said. “On my second-to-last hole, they blew the rain horn. I saw the scores and realized that I was two back from the lead. When I came back out, I still wasn’t thinking about winning. I was in the zone of playing my game and finishing strong.”
The impressive showing by the Seoul, South Korea, native buoyed a team that lost three-fifths of its lineup in the offseason. With returning National Player of the Year Celine Boutier away from the team to compete at the final LPGA tour event of the year, Choi set up for her opening drive with the expectations of an entire NCAA championship team placed squarely on her shoulders.
Dehydration compounded the challenges facing Choi, who said she had been battling symptoms in the days leading up to the tournament. Head coach Dan Brooks considered scratching Choi from the scorecard after she spent some time in an ambulance earlier this week.
“Physically I was really weak," Choi said. “I wasn’t able to hit the ball as far as I normally hit it. I wasn’t able to put all my effort into my game.”
But the sophomore powered through all three days. And when rain soaked the course late in the third round, Choi found a way to overcome that, too. Racking up 14 birdies against just five bogeys, she gave Duke the lift it needed with Boutier missing.
Adding to her tournament highlights, the sophomore made eagle on the 18th hole—which the teams played as their 14th of the day after starting on No. 5—a result Choi described as unexpected.
“It’s just fantastic. I was concerned that she wouldn’t make the trip,” Brooks said. "But for her to come in and win individually is pretty exciting."
Freshmen phenoms Leona and Lisa Maguire did not disappoint in their collegiate debuts. The twins, heralding from Cavan, Ireland, lived up to the hype surrounding their amateur resumes, combining for 22 birdies.
The Maguires’ strong performances come at the tail-end of a transition to college across the pond. Brooks cited the twins' strong work ethic and passion for the sport as reasons for the seamless changeover.
“They’re tenacious competitors. That’s very apparent to me since they showed up at Duke,” Brooks said. “They’ve really come in here ready to play. They work hard and it showed in this tournament."
Leona Maguire opened the tournament with a birdie on her way to carding a three-under-par for the first round. At 69 strokes, the effort marked the lowest career-opening round by a Duke freshman since the 2005-06 season. And she never looked back, finishing the tournament tied for fifth overall with a score of eight-under-par.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better start,” Maguire said. “[The birdie] was quite a long shot as well. It gave me a bit of momentum for the next three days.”
Junior Yi Xiao and senior Irene Jung rounded out the Blue Devil lineup in Charleston, adding some valuable experience to an otherwise young group. Xiao posted her first career round under par on the second day, carding 71 strokes to finish the round at one-under-par.
Missing from the tournament was freshman Gurbani Singh, who played in an amateur event in Japan last week representing her home country, India.
Duke brings back Boutier and Singh for the three-day Annika Intercollegiate Tournament that begins Sept. 28 in Orlando, Fla., in what will be the Blue Devils' first opportunity to exhibit the strength of their full team.
“[Overcoming being shorthanded], that’s one of the things that makes me so proud of the team," Brooks said. "We just came in and played great golf. In Celine’s absence we got the job done."
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