Freshman Virginia Elena Carta stole the stroke-play show at Eugene Country Club by hitting booming drives and sinking long putts, carrying the Blue Devils into the next stage of competition.
But when the entire team was called on to step up and take down the reigning national champion, Duke came up short.
The sixth-seeded Blue Devils were defeated 3-2 by second-seeded Stanford Tuesday afternoon in Eugene, Ore., marking the second time in as many years Duke failed to survive a national semifinal match.
“We wanted to win the national championship both times so they are both a little bit disappointing,” Duke head coach Dan Brooks told GoDuke.com. “To not only be a team on the top and to play all the way to the last four in the final tournament, you have to be really proud of that. And to do it twice in a row, you have to feel really good about it.”
Leona Maguire stood on the 18th tee 1 down to the Cardinal’s Casey Danielson after Danielson won the par-5 17th hole with a two-putt birdie, but Maguire drove her ball into an awkward downhill lie in the left rough. The miscue prevented the Duke sophomore from taking an aggressive line at the flag and giving herself the high-quality look at birdie she ultimately needed.
The Cavan, Ireland, native was still able to put a solid stroke on the ball, though, and her approach shot trickled onto the green about 30 feet away from the hole. Maguire then had an uphill, left-to-right putt to extend the match to extra holes and keep the Blue Devils' season alive, but missed the attempt as her ball settled one foot right of the hole.
“Her standards are really high and she doesn’t feel like she played as well as she could have,” Brooks said. “I didn’t see the very first part of her match and so I think that’s where she had the most trouble. The parts that I saw, the latter part, I thought Casey Danielson played really good golf and so did Leona.”
As Maguire approached the final green, junior Sandy Choi made a birdie putt on the 17th hole to go 1 up against Lauren Kim, but Stanford already had the points it needed to advance. Prior to Maguire’s defeat, the Cardinal secured two points when Mariah Stackhouse took down sophomore Gurbani Singh 3 and 2 and Sierra Kersten defeated senior Celine Boutier 4 and 2.
It was not the first time the two teams had squared off in match play, as Duke and Stanford faced each other in November at the East Lake Cup in Atlanta with the Blue Devils edging out a 3-2 win.
The Cardinal shut the door on Duke’s national championship run shortly after the Blue Devils had captured a commanding 4-1 upset victory early Tuesday against third-seeded Southern California.
In the morning match, the Trojans were the first to win a hole in all five matches, but Duke battled back and went on to capture each of its victories by at least two holes. Carta saw the largest deficit of any eventual Blue Devil winner—she was 2 down after just four holes—but the newly-crowned individual national champion turned things around quickly and posted the team’s largest margin of victory, winning 3 and 2 against junior Tiffany Chan.
In the afternoon, Carta led Stanford's Shannon Aubert when the Cardinal clinched the team victory, so the Udine, Italy, native was credited with another individual win.
Maguire—who battled symptoms of vertigo throughout the week—was the only Duke player to drop both of her points Tuesday, as she fell to Karen Chung 4 and 2 after never leading during the match.
Although Singh suffered a decisive defeat in her afternoon match against Stackhouse, she built plenty of momentum earlier against Southern California’s Robynn Ree. The New Delhi, India, native won four holes during a seven-hole stretch to build a comfortable lead against Ree and eventually settled for a 2 and 1 victory.
“We played great this morning, USC is a great team and we felt great about that. Stanford is a great team so we had to play great twice and we didn’t get it done and that is okay,” Brooks said.
The team’s national championship exit also marks the end of Boutier’s college career. Although the Montrouge, France, native struggled greatly throughout the spring season—posting a scoring average of 78.3 in her final 11 stroke-play rounds—she leaves the Blue Devils with four career victories, one team national championship and the 2014 National Player of the Year award.
Stanford will face fourth-seeded Washington in the national championship match Wednesday afternoon, looking to become the first team to win back-to-back titles since Duke won in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
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