When the defending national champions open up their title defense May 7, they will not have the luxury of doing so close to home.
No. 6 Duke was assigned to the South Bend, Ind., regional when the NCAA tournament field was released Monday evening. Coming off a second-place finish in the ACC championship April 18, the Blue Devils did not receive a bid to the regional in nearby Raleigh, N.C., at N.C. State's Lonnie Pool Golf Course. Instead, the team will take aim at the greens of the par-71 Warren Golf Course on the campus of Notre Dame.
Freshman Leona Maguire and junior Celine Boutier—the two most recent ACC tournament individual champions—will lead the Blue Devils into the regional. Maguire, who claimed the individual crown on the second playoff hole in Greensboro, is the top-ranked golfer in the country and Boutier—currently ranked 10th—came within two strokes of the individual national title last May in Tulsa, Okla.
Sophomore Sandy Choi notched a win at the Cougar Classic in September and will also look to use the experience she gained during last season's national title run in her second postseason. A pair of freshmen—Gurbani Singh and Lisa Maguire—have rounded out the Blue Devil rotation for much of the year, with Singh putting together one of her best performances of the year at the ACC championship.
Duke notched two team wins this season, claiming both the Tar Heel Invitational and the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate for the second consecutive year.
Among the Blue Devils' most dangerous opponents in South Bend are No. 5 Arizona—which claimed the conference title in a deep Pac-12 field—No. 11 Oklahoma State, No. 14 Wake Forest and the host Fighting Irish. North Carolina is the third school from the Tar Heel State to be sent to Indiana instead of to Raleigh.
The top six teams from each of the four regional sites will converge on Bradenton, Fla., for the NCAA championship May 22-27 at The Concession Golf Club. The championship will switch from stroke play to match play in 2015 to decide the team title, with the top eight teams after 54 holes of stroke play advancing to quarterfinals. The individual title will still be decided using stroke play, with the top 36 individuals after the first three days playing another 18 holes—as is usually the case—to determine the individual winner.
After the conclusion of stroke play May 25, the quarterfinal and semifinal team match play portions of the event will occur May 26, with the championship match slated for May 27.
The Blue Devils will look to prepare for the new and improved format at the regional, as teams will need to sustain strong play throughout the course of the NCAA championship this year to contend for individual and team titles.
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