Things went from bad to worse for the Blue Devils following their eighth-place showing at the United States Collegiate Championship, which concluded play Tuesday. After a largely disappointing team finish that included a near-miss of medalist honors by junior Julian Suri, the team encountered an unforeseen problem that compounded the frustration of the day.
“Our van broke down,” head coach Jamie Green, who was then forced to make an extra round-trip to Atlanta to pick up the team van after he opted to rent another van to bring his players back to Duke, said.
The transportation problems added to the already-bitter taste of a team performance that saw the Blue Devils finish 21 strokes behind UCLA’s winning total of 852 despite starting the second round one stroke off the lead. Suri, who led the team with a four-under par 212, finished in a tie for third after facing a legitimate chance of taking the individual title late in the final round.
“There [was] not a whole lot of rejoicing there,” Green said. “Obviously, Julian played a really fine tournament, but right after the round I know he was pretty upset because he certainly had a chance to win.”
Both Suri and Duke as a team got off to promising starts with strong first round scores. The team recorded a five-under par 283 on Sunday, including a 67 by the junior, leaving both the team and Suri in second place in the team and individual competitions.
Duke faltered on Monday though, shooting a 12-over par 300 and falling into a tie for eighth. Suri led the Blue Devils once again, this time carding a 74, and finished the day tied for eighth individually. Suri ran into trouble early in the second round, but it was the back nine of the Lakeside Course at the Golf Club of Georgia that tripped up the rest of the team.
On day three, behind a three-under 69 from sophomore Yaroslav Merkulov, the team rebounded with a two-over-par 290 and held on for an eighth-place finish. Suri started fast with three birdies in the first five holes to take a share of the overall lead, but wavered late with two three-putts over his final three holes, finishing two strokes behind the eventual winners.
“At the end of the week, when you add up 54 holes, he played really solid golf,” Green said. “He has played well, and that’s probably why it stings for him. He knows he is playing well enough to win golf tournaments, so when he comes up short it’s a bitter pill to swallow.”
Duke also benefited from another consistent performance by senior Spencer Anderson, who finished tied for 22nd with a two-over-par total of 218.
“He is in a really good frame of mind,” Green said. “It’s fun to watch him play out there.”
Green attributed the higher scores on the second and third days to an increase in double bogeys carded by the team.
“A double bogey is just a killer,” Green said. “We unfortunately just had too many on the card. Some were due to poorly executed golf shots, and some were due to just not a very good break. I don’t like to say, ‘Ah, we got bad breaks,’ but the reality of it is sometimes it happens.”
Green also thought that the use of caddies in the tournament might have affected the players simply because they were not used to it. The U.S. Collegiate Championship is the only tournament on Duke’s schedule in which caddies are permitted.
“It kind of throws off the rhythm sometimes, but it’s not an excuse,” Green said. “It’s not a feeling they often get in a college event. From that perspective, it’s fun. All the players on all the teams look forward to it.”
The Blue Devils will look to limit their mistakes as they finish off their fall season this weekend at the Royal Oaks Intercollegiate tournament in Dallas, Tex.
“The [team] will have to dig inside and find out where they lost some of those shots and where they can tighten things up before we leave town again,” Green said.
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