Leona Maguire, Lisa Maguire and Gurbani Singh had big shoes to fill when they stepped on campus in the fall.
The Duke lineup that won the national title in 2014 had lost three-fifths of its major contributors soon after the celebration on the 18th green in Tulsa, Okla.—Alejandra Cangrejo and Laetitia Beck graduated and Yu Liu decided to turn pro after just one season competing in Durham.
With three big holes in the roster needing to be filled, head coach Dan Brooks plugged his three freshmen right into the action. Although junior Celine Boutier and sophomore Sandy Choi are back and primed for a run at a second straight NCAA championship beginning Friday in Bradenton, Fla., the freshmen must perform well in a new tournament format for the Blue Devils to hoist the hardware again come May 27.
“I didn’t know really what to expect at the start, obviously we lost quite a few players last year and got three freshmen in," Leona Maguire said. "We'd heard a lot of stories from last year about them winning, and obviously everybody wanted to replicate that again, so it was a big change at the start, but the upperclassmen have been great showing us the ropes, and we’ve settled in pretty quickly.”
For Maguire—the top-ranked golfer in the nation—settling in did not take long. The Cavan, Ireland, native finished outside the top seven just once during the regular season and will head to The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton on a tear. Maguire followed up an individual win on the second playoff hole at the ACC championship with a narrow victory against Boutier at the NCAA regional in South Bend, Ind., pushing her streak of consecutive rounds at or below par to eight in the process.
The fast start to her Duke career propelled Maguire to the top of the leaderboard, and the rookie recently moved into the top spot of the World Amateur Golf rankings, which slates Boutier fifth. As the reigning National Player of the Year, Boutier provides the Blue Devils with another weapon capable of shooting low and a constant challenge to Maguire both in practice and during tournaments.
"The maturity level has just been so impressive—t’s a non-issue. They play their best, they congratulate each other," Brooks said. "Leona and Celine, that’s where you’d think the tension and animosity might be—I mean, if there isn’t a little bit, then something’s wrong. They both want to beat everybody, including your teammate, it’s what they do—they beat people. But within that, they’re just as absolutely mature as they could be. It’s great."
Strong rounds by Maguire and Boutier could carry the Blue Devils through the first few days of competition in Bradenton, but by themselves they cannot bring home the title.
The NCAA championship switched to a match-play format for the final two days of competition among the top eight teams after day four of stroke play, putting equal weight on the performances on all parts of the team's lineup.
For Duke to emerge as the last team standing, Singh and Lisa Maguire will have to come ready to play. Singh—a New Delhi native—turned in her first under-par tournament of the year at the ACC championship with an impressive sixth-place finish but struggled at the NCAA regional, finishing at 14-over-par. Maguire has been working on adjusting her swing of late and has not yet enjoyed the rewards of those efforts.
Although the NCAA championship is the biggest tournament Duke's freshmen have played in their Blue Devil careers, all have competed in major tournaments before prior to coming to the United States.
As a result, the pressures of match play may make them right at home.
"We really don't want them to put a lot of pressure on themselves because we can play a lot better if we're treating it as playing another tournament and don't play as if it was the biggest tournament of our lives," Boutier said after the NCAA regional. "We have really good players who have played bigger tournaments, so I think they have the experience to play well and I'm not really worried about [the freshmen]. I feel like I don't want to make it a big deal because it's just going to put more pressure on themselves, which may not be the best."
Delaney King contributed reporting.
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