The men's golf team almost did it again.
Duke nearly defended its title at the Jack Nicklaus Invitational, finishing second to the tournament host, Ohio State.
The Blue Devils placed two golfers in the top ten among individual scores. Justin Klein finished tied for second, two strokes behind the winner, Bobby Sims of Ohio State. Mike Muehr followed his fourth place finish in this tournament a year ago with a tie for sixth this year, five strokes behind Sims.
"It was a good, positive performance for us," said Duke head coach Rod Myers. "Ohio State is a very good team, and their familiarity with the course helped them a lot."
The tournament was played at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. Designed by the tournament's namesake, it is a regular stop on the Professional Golfers' Association tour every May, when The Memorial is held there. Many golf experts consider it to be Nicklaus' best-designed course, as well as one of his most difficult. When the rough is grown long and the greens are cut short, the result can be a terror track for even professional golfers, much less college amateurs.
"They really toughened the course up," Myers said. "The pin placements were in the same positions that they are for the last rounds of The Memorial."
Under such conditions, the scoring was slightly higher than for the average college tournament. But stroke play results played only a minor part in the team's results.
In the opening round on Sunday, the tournament's 12 teams were paired up for head-to-head match play, with Duke assigned to take on Hawaii.
Each of the five Blue Devil golfers played a match against one from Hawaii, with three points riding on each match. The remaining six points available came from the stroke play results of the two teams. Duke barely advanced, edging the Rainbows 11-10, on the strength of a trio of 75s by Klein, Aaron Crewse, and Joe Ogilvie.
In Sunday's second round, the team snuck past Auburn by an identical score of 11-10. Muehr sparked the Blue Devils with a 69, the lowest round shot by any golfer in the tournament. With the victory, the team advanced to the championship bracket along with Ohio State and Furman for Monday's final round.
"We kind of squeaked by in the first two rounds," Myers said. "But we had to play well down the stretch in those matches to win. I like to think that you can learn a lot more from a close victory than from a close defeat, so I was very pleased."
There was no squeaking by on Monday though, as five golfers scoring in the 70s helped Ohio State outpoint Duke 36 to 16.5. Furman finished third at 11.5. In the final round, the golfers played in threesomes, with one member from each school playing a match against each of the other two members of his group. For the stroke play results, the team was allowed to drop its worst score.
Duke totaled 306 for the final round, tying Ohio State and beating Furman by eight strokes. But the Buckeyes picked up plenty of points in the individual matches, thereby producing the 15.5 point margin of victory.
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