Despite losing two of its top three players to graduation last year, including honorable mention All-American Joe Ogilvie, the men's golf team is looking forward to the upcoming fall season. The Blue Devils have already played in the Kiawah Intercollegiate Tournament, and a combination of youth and experience helped lead the team to a second-place finish.
"We have a lot of talent this year, and we can fill the two spots easily," senior Jason Buha said. "At Kiawah we had three rounds under par as a team to finish second. We were in first before a team came from behind to beat us."
Duke has added three new freshmen to its roster, and one-Mike Christensen-has already made an immediate impact.
"Joe Ogilvie is hard to replace because he was a consistent scorer," Blue Devil head coach Rod Myers said. "But Mike Christensen is one of the top freshmen in the country and he has a good shot at being the [Atlantic Coast Conference] freshman of the year. There is no doubt he is one of the top five or 10 freshmen in the nation.
"I think he can shoot the average that Joe shot last year. That's asking a lot, but he's that quality of a player."
Christensen has presented a strong case for those claims thus far, finishing sixth at Kiawah with a three-day score of 211, just one shot behind Buha, who was first for Duke and fourth overall.
Buha is another individual who should be a consistent threat for the Blue Devils this season.
"I played a lot of competitive golf this summer and had some good finishes," Buha said.
Qualifying his play as simply good might be too modest-Buha won a major amateur tournament and finished second in another this summer. Myers feels Buha is a strong candidate for the Walker Cup team, an international competition that Myers likened to an amateur Rider Cup. The team will be selected at the end of next summer, and Buha's play this summer could enable him to be a part of the team.
"Jason has taken his game to a new level," Myers said. "He will be one of the key players in this conference."
Buha hopes to use his experience from the summer in order to reach several individual goals.
"I'm geared toward my last collegiate season and going to the NCAAs," Buha said. "The goal for every tournament is to win, and I would like to win some tournaments this year. So far I'm playing solid golf, and I have an incredible corps of guys to help push me and make me better."
The corps includes senior Erik Bertrand and juniors Chris Schmid and Todd Hill. Bertrand finished third for Duke and 12th overall at Kiawah with his three-day score of 216, and Hill and Schmid rounded out the top five with their respective scores of 221 and 231. Additionally, freshman Jim Donnelly will get an opportunity to compete this season.
"[Bertrand, Schmid and Hill] have experience and know what ACC golf is all about," Myers said. "They also know they need to raise the level of their game to improve by a stroke and a half."
The Blue Devils will get a chance to work on that improvement in the five remaining tournaments of their fall season. This weekend, Duke heads to Charlottesville, Va., to compete in the Keswick Club Cavalier Classic where it will face several other conference teams.
The Blue Devils will then have three weeks off before competing in the Newport Adams Cup in Rhode Island, a tournament Myers feels the Blue Devils have an opportunity to win. The team then competes at home in the Black and Decker Duke Golf Classic, and the following weekend Duke is at the Old Dominion Seascape Invitational in Nags Head, N.C.
The Blue Devils will finish their fall season at Stanford at the Joe Nelson Invitational, a tournament that will include solid competition from around the country.
"It's a good schedule to see where we are and how much we need to improve by at the end of the fall season," Myers said.
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