With a number of Blue Devils elevating their games late in the season, Duke has an opportunity to return to college golf’s biggest stage for the second consecutive year.
Fresh off a fifth-place finish at the ACC championship, the No. 19 Blue Devils will tee it up as the No. 4 seed at the Stillwater, Okla., NCAA regional Monday through Wednesday. Fourteen teams will play 54 holes at Karsten Creek Golf Club, with the top five squads advancing to the NCAA championship in Eugene, Ore., May 27-June 1.
“[At regionals] every shot counts. One shot could be the difference between going home or not. A little bit higher stakes obviously, a little bit more pressure, but it’s still just golf,” sophomore Jake Shuman told GoDuke.com. “It’s going to be hard, but I think we’ve played enough hard golf courses around here and in tournaments over the last two years that we’ll be ready."
Although All-ACC sophomore Adam Wood leads the team in scoring average, two other Duke golfers have been sparking head coach Jamie Green's squad of late and will look to lead the way again this week.
Shuman will bring plenty of momentum to the par-72 course, as the sophomore has posted top-three finishes in each of his last three starts. Shuman—who carries a stroke average of 72.5 this season—tied for second individually at the ACC championship in New London, N.C., thanks to a final-round 67.
The Needham, Mass., native seems to be finding his game at just the right time—his conference championship score of 207 was the lowest 54-hole total of his career.
Freshman Alex Smalley has also elevated his game late in the spring season by winning the Princeton Invitational April 9-10 and finishing in a tie for 23rd at the conference championship—second on the team behind Shuman. The Wake Forest, N.C., native has not carded a round higher than 74 since October, helping him earn the team’s third-best scoring average of 72.4.
During the break between postseason events, Smalley—along with several other Blue Devils—kept his game sharp by competing in local qualifying for this year’s U.S. Open, where he punched his ticket to the next round of qualifying and earned low-medalist honors with a round of 66.
Duke’s last trip to the 7,418-yard design at Karsten Creek was at the 2011 national championship, where the team finished eighth in stroke play and lost in the national semifinal match—one of its best postseason results in recent memory.
“Karsten Creek is an excellent test of golf,” Green told GoDuke.com. “We’re well aware that teams that are both mentally tough enough to handle the course and physically tough enough to make challenging shots are the ones who have success at Karsten Creek. Our guys have all played at the highest levels of junior and amateur golf in this country, and this course presents that kind of challenge.”
The Blue Devils will need their best golf to compete with No. 5 Clemson, No. 8 Oklahoma State and No. 20 Oklahoma, who also hope to return to the national championship. Aside from the Tigers, Duke will be joined by one other ACC team—Louisville, which finished just one shot behind Duke at the conference championship and boasts the ACC’s individual champion, junior Robin Sciot-Siegrist.
Although Shuman and Smalley have sparked the Blue Devils lately, they will look to Wood for the steady play that allowed the sophomore to lead the team by hitting 70.9 percent of greens in regulation. The Zionsville, Ind., native also led Duke in top-five and top-10 finishes this year and will look to improve on his 11th-place finish from last year's NCAA regional in Lubbock, Texas.
“Going through what we did last year, that was so much fun and to have the opportunity to do that again this year with a new group of guys, it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Wood told GoDuke.com. “We know it’s going to be a grind, but I think we’re going to be ready for it.”
Junior Matt Oshrine—who has the team’s second-lowest scoring average of 72.2—will also complete in Stillwater for Duke. Although new to this year’s squad, Oshrine will not be competing at regionals for the first time. The Loyola transfer competed in the 2014 NCAA regional in Columbia, Mo., where he tied for 43rd, and the 2015 NCAA regional in Chapel Hill, where he tied for 61st.
Max Greyserman will join Wood and Shuman at the Tom Fazio layout as Blue Devils competing at regionals for the second straight year.. The junior’s 72.6 scoring average is the team’s fifth-best, and Greyserman leads the team with a 4.7 par-5 scoring average.
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