If last year’s NCAA championship teams held a reunion party, this would be it.
No. 2 Duke heads to the historic East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta Monday to participate in the first annual East Lake Cup, a new match-play tournament that features the four men’s and women’s semifinalists from the previous year’s NCAA championship. Joining the Blue Devils on the women’s side is top-ranked Southern California, No. 3 Stanford and Baylor.
Monday will feature Duke against the Cardinal and Southern California versus the Bears. The clubs are set to tee off at 10:05 a.m. The winner of each round will play in a final on Tuesday, and there will be a consolation round for the losers. The unique match-play format of the East Lake Cup will place a focus on head-to-head matchups, but Duke head coach Dan Brooks says that the format does not affect the way his golfers prepare for the tournament.
“For the most part, we’re going to be just in our own world.” Brooks said. “There are going to be places you need to be smart based on what your opponent is doing, but that is going to be a very small percentage of the golf. Most of it is going to be playing the best you can like we would do at any tournament.”
Senior Celine Boutier, junior Sandy Choi, freshman Virginia Elena Carta, sophomore Gurbani Singh and sophomore Leona Maguire will represent the Blue Devils in Atlanta.
Maguire enters the tournament as the third-ranked golfer in the country, having captured one individual title already this season at the Tar Heel Invitational. Last week, the Cavan, Ireland, native notched a top-five finish at the Landfall Tradition in Wilmington, N.C., to continue her strong season thus far.
Boutier enters Monday’s match play after finishing tied for fourth at the Landfall Tradition. Choi arrives at East Lake fresh off notching her first top-10 finish of the season—also at the Landfall Tradition.
They are the same group that Brooks has had placed his trust in all season—and they have enjoyed an extraordinary amount of success together. After finishing fourth at the ANNIKA Invitational in late September, the Blue Devils have gone on a spree, winning two consecutive tournaments in the course of a month.
Now, they look to continue their hot streak at one of the greatest golf courses in the nation.
Established in 1904, East Lake is the oldest known golf course in Atlanta. Tom Bendelow served as its chief architect, but Donald Ross—who also served as the chief designer for Pinehurst No. 2—reworked Bendelow’s basic design in 1913, and that is the design that lives on to this day.
“It’s a great golf course. We love to play on the best golf courses,” Brooks said. “If you’re smart and you miss it in the right places, you are not going to be punished…. It’s not ridiculously hard in that it gives you places to play the ball smartly…. It actually would be a lot of fun to be a member here, because you could play this day in and day out and never get tired of it."
After the format of the NCAA championship tournament was changed last year to include a stage of match play, golf experts from around the country complained that there were not enough match-play tournaments during the regular season to prepare teams for the format of the championship.
Brooks, however, is part of a contingent that says otherwise, pointing out that in match play the primary objective is still playing the golf course, not the opponent.
“Stroke play prepares you well for match play,” Brooks said. “Most of what you are doing in golf is playing the golf course. A vast majority of your golf, whether it’s stroke play or match play, is just trying to get the lowest score on every hole. Awareness of what your opponent is doing is not nearly as significant as simply playing golf one hole at a time, one stroke at a time.”
With some of the country’s best competition converging on one of its beloved golf courses for a tournament mirrored after the pinnacle of college golf—the NCAA championship—the East Lake Cup promises to be a special event.
And though it is easy for fans to get swept up in the gravity of an event like the East Lake Cup, Brooks is quick to point out that no tournament is more important that any other.
“We’re just treating it like a tournament,” Brooks said. “We treat every tournament like it’s the NCAA championship. Every tournament is very important, so this is no different, no exception.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.