Katharina Poppmeier picked a perfect time to put it all together.
Poppmeier finally played the kind of all-around solid golf that she had been hoping to see in winning the 1994 Atlantic Coast Conference women's golf tournament at the Old North State Course at Uwharrie Point in New London. The Blue Devils, though, were unable to capitalize on Poppmeier's performance, finishing third in the four-team event.
"I feel good because I put in a lot of work this semester and I was hoping it would pay off," Poppmeier said of her first collegiate tournament title.
Poppmeier, who led after every round, edged last year's champion, Stephanie Neill from Wake Forest, by two strokes to become the first Blue Devil medalist at the ACC Championships since Evelyn Orley in 1985.
"I told her when we talked later, `I've always known that you have a lot of talent, that you have the physical talent, but the one thing I didn't know is whether you could hold on for the win,"' said Duke head coach Dan Brooks of the sophomore from Graz, Austria.
Having finished third in last week's tournament, Poppmeier had been playing well recently. She credited a swing change that Brooks helped her incorporate after last week as one factor in her victory.
"Last week we figured out something watching the videotape of my swing," Poppmeier said. "We changed my swing. I made it more compact. [Brooks] helped me out a lot."
The change came in particularly handy for the conditions Poppmeier faced. Gusty winds played havoc with many shots, and longer swings were liable to be affected by a stiff breeze at a critical time. Poppmeier combined her superior ball-striking with some timely putting to emerge with the crown.
Poppmeier entered the 15th hole behind by a stroke. A good birdie combined with a bogey by Neill gave Poppmeier a lead she wouldn't relinquish down the stretch. Poppmeier played nearly flawless golf for the last three holes, splitting fairways, hitting safe approach shots, and sinking putts to clinch the title.
"She was just solid," Brooks said. "I'm going to remember those last three holes for a long, long time."
The memories of this weekend will likely be bittersweet for Brooks however, whose team finished third after returning all five starters from its 1993 ACC champion squad.
A key factor in the Blue Devils' eight stroke loss to Wake Forest was a bizarre and disappointing disqualification of Pam Soliman's second round score.
Duke trailed Wake Forest by a mere stroke after the first round. The Blue Devils appeared to be in great position to come from behind to win on Sunday after the players walked off the golf course on Saturday.
Taking the team's four best scores from its five players, it seemed as though the squad had dropped only four more strokes to the Demon Deacons in the second round, leaving Duke an extremely negotiable deficit to overcome on Sunday of five strokes.
Instead, the team entered the final round 16 strokes behind after it was discovered that Soliman had returned her signed scorecard with a lower score for a hole than she had actually made. Soliman's card added up to 76 instead of the correct 77, even though the sums for each nine holes recorded on the card by Soliman's fellow competitor in the pairing who kept Soliman's score, were accurate and did total 77.
"It was one of those mistakes that you don't want to happen to anyone," Brooks said. "She is extremely conscientious. It was a very unfortunate turn of events."
The elimination of Soliman's 77 forced the Blue Devils to include an uncharacteristically high round of 88 shot by Tonya Blosser in their total for Saturday.
This caused the Duke score for the second round to increase by 11 strokes, leaving the Blue Devils adrift by a margin that was just too much to overcome.
Duke did fight back valiantly Sunday, putting Saturday's mishap behind it.
In blustery conditions on the long and difficult Uwharrie Point course, Soliman recovered from the previous day's events well enough to shoot a 79, and Blosser shaved 12 strokes off her second round total to finish with her second 76 of the tournament.
Also returning to form was Stephanie Sparks. Last year's runner-up, Sparks got off to a rough start with an 82 on Friday but warmed up on the weekend to post a 77 and a 74, good enough for seventh place.
"We're playing a windy course at 6,200 yards, which is about 200 yards longer than most courses we play," Brooks said. "I thought they hung pretty tough. I thought they played a hell of a tournament."
The strong finish by the Blue Devils opened the door for a painful game of what-if: Duke ended up losing to Wake Forest by eight strokes, and if Soliman's scorekeeper hadn't erred or if Soliman had been lucky enough to catch the error before she returned the card, thereby saving Duke 11 strokes. . .
"That's a big if because things would have been different [on Sunday]," Brooks said. "We didn't approach it that way. We went into it with the idea that we could win the thing today. And you know, we gave them a heck of a run. At the turn we were eight shots back and we started the day 16 shots back. So we made up eight shots on the front nine.
"We scared them."
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