Women's golf wins Fall Preview by 4 strokes

The women's golf team apparently hasn't missed a beat since May's national championship.

The Blue Devils won their first tournament of the year yesterday, taking the title at the annual NCAA Fall Preview. Duke, who led after the first two rounds, fired a team-best 291 in yesterday's third and final round and defeated second-place finishers Southern Cal and Arizona by four strokes.

The Fall Preview was played at the Crosswater Golf Club in Sunriver, Ore., the site of this year's NCAA Championships. Crosswater is a brutally long course and against a field that boasted each of the nation's top 10 teams, coach Dan Brooks could not be more pleased with the outcome.

"This was fun for a lot of reasons," Brooks said. "This is probably the hardest course I've ever seen a team play on. The difficulty of the layout was as tough as I've ever seen, so I'm very impressed with our scores.... It feels good."

Yesterday, sophomore Candy Hannemann led the way for Duke with a 71 and finished the tournament tied for sixth with a 54-hole final score of 220. Amie Lehman, who was in a tie for first place following Tuesday's round, struggled yesterday with three triple-bogeys and carded a 79, finishing the tournament in eighth place. Still, for a senior who did not start for much of last year, her performance was a pleasant surprise.

"I'm happy for her," Brooks said. "She sort of had a lot to prove in her mind because she played well last fall but didn't get into the lineup late in the year. For her to come in here, against by far the best field we'll play this fall, and be leading after two rounds is tremendous."

Junior Kalen Anderson and sophomore Beth Bauer tied for 11th place, finishing with a three-day total of 222. Meanwhile, freshman Maria Garcia-Estrada finished in a tie for 20th place with a 225 in her first college tournament.

Duke's next tournament will be a bit more exotic when the Blue Devils travel to Fukushima, Japan for the Topy Cup Sept. 21-23.