Duke women’s golf is halfway to a centennial of its own. The team opened its 51st season finishing tied for fifth at the ANNIKA Intercollegiate in Lake Elmo, Minn.
The Blue Devils, ranked No. 15 in the Mizuno WGCA preseason poll, faced tough competition from a stacked field including first-place finisher South Carolina — which led the rest of the field by 27 strokes — and second-place Oregon. Still, Duke rose to the challenge and persevered through tough holes and rounds of play.
“Nobody on that team got down, everybody kept fighting,” said head coach Dan Brooks. “It wasn’t always easy golf, but they kept their chins up."
The Blue Devils displayed relative consistency over the three days of competition, finishing at +2 overall on the par-72 course. Round one was the team’s highest-scoring; they exited the round at 3-over. The next day, Duke shot 2-under in its second round, the lowest of the three.
“I’m glad that early in the season, somebody has set a high bar,” Brooks said in reference to the Gamecocks. “But that doesn’t tell me that they’re in a different league by any stretch. We’ve got a long season ahead of us, and we have some motivated players.”
Returning to the program are sophomore Katie Li, junior Andie Smith and senior Rylie Heflin. Li and Smith alternated delivering breakout days for Duke — Li carded a 66 in the first round, and Smith followed with 7-under in the second. Smith’s 18-hole score was a tournament-best and landed her a spot as the seventh Blue Devil in program history to shoot multiple rounds of 65, or better, in competition.
“Those two rounds were tremendous. We’ve got the kind of skills [where] that could happen to anybody on this team. Any one of them could have had a super low round,” Brooks said.
Li rounded out the competition with a 75-70 finish (T-4) on days two and three. Smith hit 7-over and 3-over in her first and third rounds, respectively.
Heflin’s competition appearance marks her first for Duke since the March 15-17 Florida State Match Up. She modeled consistency over her rounds, shooting 72, 73 and 72 for a total of 217.
“I’m proud of Rylie also, she just stayed real solid,” Brooks said. “She’s done some great work on her psychological aspect of the game.”
This year, the team has added several fresh faces to its ranks. Freshmen Anna Cañado Espinal, Carla De Troia and Martina Yu all joined Duke this year, coming from Spain, France and Canada, respectively. Both Cañado Espinal and De Troia played in Lake Elmo.
“They bring a great spirit to the team and great energy, all three of them,” Brooks said.
De Troia’s strongest play came on day three when she shot even-par and landed her first eagle as a Blue Devil. In round one, though, she hit +6 on just one hole — 10-over for the round — and followed by carding a 76 the next day.
Brooks remarked that De Troia’s experience “can happen to anybody” and “she kept up.”
“The fight that she showed after that … watching her on the golf course, you really see how she keeps her chin up and keeps playing hard,” Brooks said.
Cañado Espinal individually finished the competition at +8 (T-39). After two days sitting just above par, she struggled in the final round, hitting 5-over.
“You don’t fully know what you have until you’ve seen them play in a tournament, and I couldn’t be more excited,” Brooks said. “They’re both resilient.”
Among the tournament’s 12-team field was the 2024 national champion runner-up, UCLA, and a semifinalist, Oregon. Seven teams, including Duke, currently sit within the top-18 of the preseason rankings.
Brooks is “not daunted” by his team’s opening performance, though he does plan to sharpen its skill set in coming weeks. Brooks believes that the Blue Devils “need to improve in general,” rather than work on a single weakness. He said that progress will come through training “day by day, step by step” and “in all areas of the game.”
“Especially on a great golf course like this, you get a lot of clear feedback on your strengths and weaknesses,” Brooks said. “We learned a lot as we went.”
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Ryan Kilgallen is a Trinity sophomore and an associate news editor for the news department.