With three holes to play in the final round of the NCAA Central Regional Saturday, No. 20 Duke sat outside the top 10, looking up the leaderboard at the teams that were in position to move on.
But Michael Quagliano's birdies on the 16th and 18th holes moved Duke up into ninth place at 31-over par-good enough to earn a berth in this weekend's NCAA Championships.
"It wasn't the prettiest picture, but we're excited," head coach Rod Myers said. "I'll take the close ending. I'm just really proud of the way our guys finished."
Duke rode the play of freshman Clark Klaasen, who finished the three-day tournament at 4-over par in a tie for 14th place. Klaasen tied with sophomore Michael Schachner for the team's best round of the weekend, firing a 1-under 70 on the tournament's first day.
"I really think this may have been a breakout performance for him," Myers said of Klaasen's play. "I think he answered any questions he had about whether or not he belonged."
Klaasen's strong play was necessary because Duke's two top players all season long-senior Ryan Blaum and junior Jake Grodzinsky-struggled, finishing in a 63rd-place tie.
Blaum, the 10th-ranked player in the country, suffered from food poisoning on the tournament's first day, Myers said. Blaum vomited twice before teeing off and once during his round in which he recorded eight bogies on his way to a 78.
Grodzinsky, who has fallen to 40th in the national rankings after climbing as high as ninth earlier this year, could not muster a score better than 74 in any of his three rounds.
By finishing in the top 10, the Blue Devils will be part of the 30-team field at the NCAA Championships, which start May 31 in Sunriver, Ore. Duke played in the Fall Preview at the same course in September against 14 of the top teams in the country and finished fifth.
In that tournament, Grodzinsky recorded the second top-10 finish of his career, tying for ninth place, and senior Ryan Blaum finished tied for 18th. Schachner also played well, finishing in a 32nd-place tie.
"We had pretty good success at Sunriver in the Fall, but I didn't think we shot that well out there," Myers said. "It's an advantage to have played out there once, to know the golf course. On a course as hard as that, it's an advantage to not spend time trying to figure out the line, figure out where you are trying to hit it and what we want to try to keep away from."
Of the Blue Devils' starting lineup for the upcoming NCAA Championships, four players competed both at Sunriver in the Fall and in the 2005 NCAA Championships.
Klaasen, the fifth, will be making his first appearance both at Sunriver and in the NCAA Championships.
"I think I'll be a little nervous to start out-it's a big tournament," Klaasen said. "But once we get going out there and get a few holes under our belt, I think I'll start to calm down a little bit."
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