Women's golf finishes in tie for 4th at Derby Invit.

After a rainy and relatively inactive October, the women's golf team didn't have much to write home about in an up-and-down fall season. But after returning from her home continent to rejoin the reigning national champions, Virada Nirapathpongporn cast a beam of sunshine on her awakened team to close out the early season.

Following a two-tournament absence to play in the Asian Games last month, the defending individual champ rode a final-round 69 Sunday to a fourth-place finish as an under-prepared Duke team finished fourth at the Derby Invitational in Auburn, Ala. this weekend.

"It feels great to have her back. I think a lot of it truly is her just getting comfortable back in school, getting relaxed and just believing--nothing new about that," head coach Dan Brooks said of Nirapathpongporn, whose four straight birdies on the back nine in the final round gave her a one-under 215 for the weekend, besting the 28th place 228 she fired in her only other action of the fall in mid-September.

While their leader was also consistent Saturday, with three birdies and only two bogies, the Blue Devils dropped off the team lead each day of the tournament, falling to winner Tennessee. Poor driving spoiled a solid total of 290 Sunday as bogeys littered the Duke scorecards on the back nines the rest of the weekend.

"Mentally, we were really strong," Brooks said. "And I think it says a lot to go under-prepared onto a course that's pretty tough and shoot a good number--granted, it's not the number we wanted to shoot [or] a number that we weren't really all that happy with."

Despite wretched weather ruining their practice schedule last week and the long layoff from their last tournament in early October, the Blue Devils saw other strong performances en route to totalling 41 birdies overall.

Junior Leigh-Anne Hardin shot a two-under 70 in the first round but dropped way off as the weekend progressed, leaving sophomore Niloufar Aazam-Zanganeh to pick up the slack and continue her strong season with a 71 Sunday as the national champions saw some light at the end of the fall's tunnel.

"I'm not disappointed in our fall," Brooks said. "It just doesn't show up in the books like you would've liked.