After capturing their first ACC championship since 2014, the Blue Devils are back in stroke play action and looking to go two-for-two in postseason play with a victory at the NCAA regional.
The last time Duke accomplished such a feat, it went on to win its sixth national championship.
The Blue Devils will travel to Albuquerque, N.M., to compete in one of four NCAA regional contests held throughout the country Monday through Wednesday. Duke earned the No. 3 seed in the 19-team event and will tackle 54 holes at The Championship Golf Course at the University of New Mexico in hopes of earning a spot in the NCAA championship field.
All No. 9 Duke needs is a top-six finish to advance to the postseason’s final test later this month, as the six lowest-scoring teams at the regional—along with the three best individuals not on those teams—will advance to the national championship held May 19-24 in Sugar Grove, Ill. But head coach Dan Brooks and his players have much loftier goals than that cutoff this week.
“It’s always about winning. That’s the only way we ever think, so it’s not like I have to worry about explaining that to them,” Brooks said. “We don’t do anything other than try and win everything we play in. And then when you do that, you do it so it’s the only way you think when you get to regionals. If we don’t win it... we’re not going to be excited.”
That attitude has allowed the Blue Devils to find success throughout the spring and carry plenty of momentum into Monday’s round, as the team rides a streak of two straight tournament victories and has not finished worse than third in 2017. Duke has not faced stroke play competition since winning its conference championship April 13-15, but filled the three-week gap by teeing up in the Northwestern Quad match last weekend, where it earned a 4-1 match play victory against then-No. 5 Florida State.
Leona Maguire will lead the Blue Devil charge in top form, as she has captured two consecutive individual titles heading into the NCAA regional with victories at the LSU Tiger Golf Classic and ACC championship. The junior is the team’s scoring average leader by nearly three strokes—averaging 69.7 shots per round—and has not finished lower than a tie for sixth in eight starts this season while being outscored by just 12 of the 556 other golfers she has competed against.
“The state of her game is great,” Brooks said. “Leona never gets very far off, but I’ve been watching her train and practice. For the most part I just let her go, but I keep my eye on her just to see if she’s staying on track and actually getting better with the way she’s doing things. She’s got a good swing going on right now.”
Hailing from Udine, Italy, sophomore Virginia Elena Carta will play in her second regional after tying for seventh in last year’s event in Baton Rouge, La. Carta did not compete in the team’s match against the Seminoles, but she will tee off Monday riding two straight top-20 finishes, highlighted by a tie for second at the LSU Tiger Golf Classic that included a season-low round of 67.
Sandy Choi has an excellent history at NCAA regional events and will look to continue that success at The Championship Golf Course. The senior, competing in her fourth regional, has not finished worse than a tie for 14th in the postseason’s penultimate competition, with her best finish—a tie for fourth—coming last year. Choi also notched a tie for fourth at last month’s ACC championship with rounds of 71, 73 and 71 before going on to win her Northwestern Quad match 6-and-4, the largest margin of victory for any Duke player.
“What makes her play so well in a sport like this is that she has impeccable rhythm in her swing,” Brooks said. “If your rhythm changes when you get wound up and it slows down when you calm down, now you’re not playing with the same swing and that affects your golf. Now she—no matter what’s going on with her—is able to keep the same physical motion, the same rhythm, and that is her great asset and that’s why it stands up when the pressure’s on.”
Standing in the Blue Devils’ way will be five other top-25 teams, including No. 3 Stanford and No. 10 Southern California, which occupy the event’s top-two seeds. Fellow ACC competitors No. 15 Miami and No. 19 N.C. State will also make the trip west.
Freshman Ana Belac and junior Lisa Maguire will complete the Blue Devils’ lineup on the par-72 course. Belac is coming off a tie for 14th, two-over-par result at the ACC Championship and halved her match against Florida State’s Lydia Gumm last weekend. Maguire picked up a point in the Northwestern Quad but has not represented Duke in a stroke play event since early March, beating out Gurbani Singh in the team’s qualifying rounds to earn a spot on this week’s roster.
In The Championship Golf Course, the Blue Devils face the longest track they have seen all season at 6,637 yards, though Albuquerque’s 5,300-foot elevation will allow golf balls to fly farther and prevent the course’s length from being a significant obstacle. The last time Duke played the course was at the 2008 national championship, which Brooks said he remembers most for extreme winds the players faced that suspended competition at one point.
“You need to be able to place the ball. It’s got some landing areas that will kick it here and there so we’re going to be needing to pay attention to the details of the golf course,” Brooks said. “It’s a good championship course. That’s why they’ve hosted nationals there. It’s that level of a golf course.”
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