Update: Due to weather, the tournament has changed its schedule so 36 holes will be played Friday and 18 will be completed Sunday. No golf will be played Saturday.
Last year, Duke arrived in Baton Rouge without a victory in more than five months, but left with plenty of hardware to propel them into the postseason.
The team finds itself in a similar predicament this time around, and is looking to take advantage of its recent experience at The University Club to end the regular season on a high note once again.
The Blue Devils will complete Friday through Sunday at the LSU Tiger Golf Classic in Baton Rouge, La., where the team will look to defend its title at the par-72 course with four-fifths of the roster that won by 16 strokes there last year. No. 10 Duke, which has been marred by a lack of continuity in its lineups this season, is still looking for its first stroke-play victory of 2016-17—if it fails to win this weekend, it will be team’s first campaign without a regular-season stroke-play victory since 2012-13.
“We’re a team that can win. We have that level of talent,” Blue Devil head coach Dan Brooks said. “I would say we’ve never had a year where we had somebody out of the lineup as often as we had this year. So, that’s part of the reason that we don’t have more wins, I think, is that we haven’t had our full training going into tournaments or we haven’t had our full lineup going in.”
Duke’s victory in 2016 was well-helped by a blistering performance from then-senior Celine Boutier—who won the individual title by 14 strokes—but Brooks said he is confident that the player filling Boutier’s shoes this weekend has the talent to succeed at the challenging 6,247-yard track. Freshman Ana Belac is the team’s only player without experience at the course, but has shown no signs of difficulty in adjusting to new courses this season and is currently riding a streak of three top-15 finishes.
“She’s been doing great on these tough courses we’re playing that she’s never seen before, so I’m glad that our freshman happens to be somebody that can attack the tough courses really well,” Brooks said. “It’s not particularly long or short, so it’s not a driver’s golf course, it’s not a short-game golf course.… I think she’ll do well there because she’s got the overall game and it’s an overall kind of a golf course.”
Apart from Belac, each of the Blue Devils competing this weekend notched six competitive rounds at The University Club last season, as the team was selected to compete in the 54-hole NCAA Regional held there six weeks after the 2016 iteration of the LSU Tiger Golf Classic.
Virginia Elena Carta will return to the course that jumpstarted the late-season hot streak that earned her an individual national championship, as the sophomore tied for second at this event last season—her best career finish at the time—by carding rounds of 75, 77 and 70. She has been slow to show the same talent level this spring, though, as she has missed practice time and one event due to illness and having her tonsils removed. Two weekends ago in Gainesville, Fla., Carta posted her second-highest stroke-play finish of the season by tying for 27th.
“I think Virginia’s in good shape,” Brooks said. “I think she’s ready to play but I don’t have anything to base that on other than just her attitude’s great and I’ve loved the way that she’s been working on her swing and on her game…. Whether she really shines in this tournament or not, I look for sort of Gainesville as really the beginning of the spring for her and really getting ready for postseason.”
Junior Gurbani Singh will tee off at the David Toms and Jim Lipe design playing some of the best golf of her college career. With three top-seven finishes in her last four starts, the junior is in a great position to improve upon her showings at The University Club last year, where she tied for 14th at last year’s event before tying for 44th place in her postseason effort there.
The New Delhi native led the team in birdies during the Gainesville event, and birdies will be a premium this weekend at a layout that fostered a 78.99 scoring average last season in this tournament—the highest such figure of any course Duke played in 2015-16.
“I think she has great powers of concentration,” Brooks said. “When she decided to dedicate herself to playing, you know, her mind, it can really lock in. I think that’s where she shines more than anything, is just simply the decision to lock in and concentrate.”
Leona Maguire has consistently spearheaded Duke as its scoring average leader and has not finished worse than a tie for sixth in any stroke-play event entering the Baton Rouge contest. She began her most recent competitive round at the SunTrust Gator Invitational with the outright lead but was surpassed by Florida’s Maria Torres, eventually finishing in second place after shooting 71, 67 and 69. The Cavan, Ireland, native was one of three Blue Devils to tie for 14th at this event last year and tied for seventh in the 2016 regional event.
Senior Sandy Choi will tackle The University Club also in the midst of a strong spring showing as she tied for 11th two weeks ago and opened her spring slate March 3-5 at the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate, where she placed in fifth. Like Maguire, Choi also tied for 14th at the 2016 LSU Golf Classic following rounds of 78, 74 and 76.
Lisa Maguire will also compete as an individual, looking to improve after three consecutive showings of a tie for 69th or worse.
The event features just four ranked teams with No. 14 Arkansas, No. 19 Oklahoma State and No. 21 NC State participating in addition to the Blue Devils. Regardless of who comes out on top of the 15-team field, though, Brooks emphasized his team should focus on controlling how they approach each shot on the course rather than worrying about the event’s result.
“We spend out time talking about process, not outcome,” Brooks said. “Everybody loves to win but we may feel great about a third-place performance, especially if somebody was out of the lineup or somebody was playing under the weather. They’re smart enough to know that if that player gets back in or if she gets fully trained, they can do the math.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.