With a new format and new members, the Blue Devils will look to defend their national title and hoist the trophy for the seventh time in program history.
Fifth-ranked and fourth-seeded Duke heads to Bradenton, Fla., to compete in the NCAA championship, which begins Friday and concludes May 27. The Concession Golf Club will host four rounds of stroke play—the norm for past tournaments—to crown an individual champion. From there, the top eight teams will advance to three rounds of match play to determine the team champion, a new format for collegiate golf's final tournament of the year.
“If they told us we were playing left-handed with broomsticks, I’d say, ‘Alright, let’s get really good at it,’” Blue Devil head coach Dan Brooks said. “I’m excited about anything they want us to do if it includes hitting a golf ball.”
Most college tournaments feature only stroke play, in which the total score at the end of the round determines both the individual and team standings. Match play assigns one point per hole to the team whose individual wins that hole against an individual representing an opposing team.
The change will make the championship week significantly longer—six days at most compared to four in last year’s tournament—including one 36-hole day for those teams that advance to the first day of match play to cut the field from eight teams to two.
Duke’s squad has at least three players—freshmen Lisa and Leona Maguire as well as junior Celine Boutier—with match play experience gained during individual tournaments, but collegiate competition tends to stick exclusively to stroke play.
“Definitely at the end it’s nearly more mental than physical,” Leona Maguire said. “A lot of the match play events are 36 holes in one day and sometimes on multiple days, so I guess me, Lisa and Celine are a little bit more used to that than the other girls, which is definitely going to be to our benefit this week.”
The Blue Devils will take on the new format fresh off a win at the South Bend Regional in South Bend, Ind., after Maguire and Boutier claimed the top two spots and helped their team to a first-place finish for the third time this season.
“I’d say that regional championship was the best we’ve been,” Brooks said. “To have both Leona and Celine finish one and two, and to do it the way we did it—just solid, playing great golf right on through.”
Duke’s regional win helped them recover from an ACC tournament loss to Virginia despite Maguire capturing the individual title. The Cavaliers notched an impressive 27-under par for the tournament, which was consolidated into two days of 27 holes each day due to weather, becoming the first team outside of the state of North Carolina to take home the ACC title.
“We’ve been working hard since [ACCs], just trying to fine tune everything to make sure we’re prepared as best as possible,” Maguire said. “We had a good ACCs [but] we didn’t have a great ACCs. Virginia got the better of us, but we’ll try and get one better than them when we go to Florida.”
As Duke turns to the big stage in Bradenton, it will be chasing its seventh national championship—a familiar outcome with a roster without much experience at the NCAA championship.
The Blue Devils will send three freshmen to the season's final event for just the second time in program history, with Boutier and sophomore Sandy Choi being the only two members of the lineup with national championship experience from last year's title run in Tulsa, Okla.
“I’ve definitely heard a lot about what happened in Tulsa last year,” Maguire said. “They obviously have a lot of great memories from that week, so hopefully we can emulate that next week.”
The new match play format not only extends the week of golf but also adds pressure to every hole instead of relying solely on the results of an 18-hole round. With two teams paired, both coaches select and match individual players to compete against each other to score points for their own teams.
“There’s a lot of scoreboards around, and it’s easy to know what’s going on, so it’s very easy to be aware of what’s going on in the other matches—it’s all around you,” Brooks said. “You just want to keep your mind on what you’re doing and not get too hung up. I don’t ever tell anybody, ‘Don’t look at the boards'…because that’s [not a] good mentality either.”
The new format and longer week will mean individuals must perform well early to get Duke into the match-play stage after 16 of the 24 teams are sent home. Once there, defending the national title will require every member of the lineup to be successful. If the performance in South Bend is any indication, the Blue Devils may be in good shape.
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