Having qualified for the NCAA regional in 16 of the last 17 seasons, Duke is certainly no stranger to the big stage.
But the Blue Devils will have their work cut out for them if they hope to advance from a deep regional field to the NCAA championship at the end of the month.
Duke will begin NCAA regional action Thursday at the Rawls Course in Lubbock, Texas. The Blue Devils earned the eighth seed in the region after recording four top-five finishes along with victories at the Bandon Dunes Championship and the Blue Devil Spring Shootout.
“We feel great, and I think the committee did a great job of balancing things out,” Duke head coach Jamie Green said. “It’s definitely a golf course where—if you drive the golf ball well—you’ll deserve to have good opportunities, and I think our guys do that pretty well.”
The teams with the five lowest total scores at the end of the 54-hole regional tournament will advance to the championship, which will be held May 29-June 3 at the Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla.
Cracking the top five will be a tall task for the Blue Devils, as five squads ranked in the top 30 of the latest Golfweek rankings will join Duke in Lubbock— including the top three seeded teams No. 3 Texas, No. 11 and host school Texas Tech and No. 7 Auburn.
“The goal is obviously to advance," Green said. “The saying goes, 'as long as you're one shot in front of sixth place, it's as good as first.' Everybody here is just trying to get to the national championship. I don’t care if you're Texas or Texas Tech, they’re all just trying to survive.”
Duke will rely on the freshman duo of Adam Wood and Jake Shuman to post solid scores and keep the squad within striking distance. Both have responded well to competition on the collegiate level—Wood has recorded three top-10 and six top-20 finishes to go along with a 73.0 stroke average, and Shuman's fourth-place tie at the Blue Devil Spring Shootout marks his best finish of the season and added a second top-10 finish to the young golfer's record.
Perhaps the biggest key for the Blue Devils this weekend will be getting a strong performance from one or more of their experienced golfers. Sophomore Max Greyserman and junior Motin Yeung have both shown flashes of potential this season, with Greyserman finishing just one spot shy of the top 20 at the Yale Spring International in April and Yeung claiming an individual win at the Blue Devil Spring Shootout in March. Senior Turner Southey-Gordon will also be a key contributor as he comes in with the most experience in big tournaments of any player on the roster—including a team-leading 29 rounds played this season.
“Every guy in our lineup has played at a high level in junior and amateur golf and played in some pretty big tournaments for us in college already,” Green said. “We don’t know exactly how we’ll set, but we know the wind is going to blow, and as long as our guys can control their distance and make educated guesses with the wind, we’ll be fine.”
If the Blue Devils are able to adjust to the course, the team has a good shot at making some noise during the later stages of the tournament.
“As long as we’re in the hunt on Sunday on the back nine—with what our guys have done to work hard through this year and get better all spring long—that would be good for us,” Green said. “We’re not going to be satisfied until we have the opportunity to play at Concession Golf Club later this month.”
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